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The Secret Life 



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M 



THE 

SECRET LIFE 

Being 

THE BOOK OF 
A H ERETIC 



" Prove all things : hold fast that which is good." 

5/. Paul, I ThessaJonians v. 21. 

"Ici Ton voulut que tout flit simple, tranquille, sans ostentation d'esprit 
ni de science, que personne ne se crflt engag^ a avoir raison, et que 
Ton idt toujours en etat de ceder sans honte, surtout qu'aucun sys- 
t&me ne dominat dans TAcadtoie a Pexclusion des autres, et qu'on 
laissat toujours toutes les portes ouvert k la verite." Fontenelle. 



NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MDCCCCVI 
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 



Copyright, IQ06 
B? John Lane Company 



LlBRAflY of CONGRESS 
Two Ciioies Receive* 

MAY 3 ?9Qfi 

CLASS Q- XXc. No. 
OOPV B, 






The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U. S. A. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

L'Enfant Terrible . . . . i 
An Optimistic Cynic ... 7 
A Poet Sheep-rancher . . .10 
An Eaten Cake . . . -13 
Concerning Elbows on the Table . 16 
An Autumn Impulse ... . 17 

John-a*-Dreams . . . • 19 

The Fountain of Salmacis . . 41 
Two Siegfrieds / . . . .44 

A Door Ajar ..... 47 
At Time of Death .... 49 
The Curse of Babel ... 49 
The Fourth Dimension ... 52 
The Ant and the Lark ... 58 
The Doppelganger ... 63 

"A Young Man's Fancy*' . . 73 
An Arabian Looking-glass . . 78 
The Cry of the Women ... 80 
The Beauty of Cruelty ... 95 
The Duke of Wellington's Trees . loi 
The Boy with the Goose . .103 



CONTENTS 



A God Indeed 

A Question of Skulls 

The Modern Woman and Marriage 

The Ideal Husband 

A New Law of Heahh . 

"Dead, Dead, Dead" . 

Verbal Magic 

Hamlet .... 

Ghosts .... 

Amateur Saints 

The Zeitgeist 

The Abdication of Man . 

Life 

Portable Property . 

Are American Parents Selfish? 

A Question of Heredity . 

The Little Dumb Brother 

Fever Dreams 

A Misunderstood Moralist 

The Pleasures of Pessimism . 

Moral Pauperism . 

On a Certain Lack of Humour in 

Frenchmen 
The Value of a Soul 
A Grateful Spaniard 
Bores ..... 

vi 



PAGE 



CONTENTS 




PAGE 


Emotions and Oxydization 


V3 


Abelard to Heloise 


275 


Heloise to Abelard 


277 


Yumei Mujitsu .... 


279 


The Real Thing .... 


284 


"Oh, Eloquent, Just, and Mighty 




Death" 


286 


'' PhiHstia, be Thou Glad of Me " . 


299 


*'0h King, Live Forever!" . 


305 


The Little Room .... 


S^'J 


Aftermath ..... 


312 



Vll 



THE SECRET LIFE 



June 21. 

"The very Devil's in the moon for mischief: 
There's not a day, the longest, not the twenty-first of June, 
Sees half the mischief in a quiet way 
On which three single hours of moonlight smile. " 

At my age, alas! one no longer gets into 
mischief, either by moonlight or at mid- 
summer, and yet to-day all the L'Enfant 
tricksey spirits of the invisible Terrible, 
world are supposed to be abroad — tan- 
gling the horses' manes, souring the milk- 
maid's cream, setting lovers by the ears. 
Some such frisky Puck stirs even peaceable 
middle-aged blood at this season to mild 
little secret sins, such as beginning a diary 
in which to set down one's private naughty 
views — the heresies one has grown too staid 
and cautious to give speech to any longer. 

All, I think, have some Secret Garden 
where they unbind the girdle of conven- 
tions and breathe to a sympathetic listener 
the opinions they would repudiate indig- 



THE SECRET LIFE 



nantly upon the housetops; but I know 
of no such kindred soul — indeed my 
private views are so heretical that I 
should tremble to whisper them even into 
the dull cold ear of night, lest I should 
cause it to turn pink, and thereafter hymns 
would not purge it. Hence no resource 
remains to ease my bosom of its perilous 
stuff but the unprotesting innocence of 
the blank pages of a diary. 

There is a story concerning the king of 
some ungeographical country, to whom 
came two adventurers of cynical tenden- 
cies, professing to be able — given a cer- 
tain allowance of jewels and precious 
metals — to weave a garment of exceeding 
richness and of such subtle texture that 
no monarch on earth might hope to match 
it. Setting up a loom and providing them- 
selves with ample materials from the Royal 
treasury, they went through the motions of 
stringing a warp and thereupon industri- 
ously threw empty shuttles back and forth. 

When the king, accompanied by his court, 
was summoned to observe the progress of 
the famous web, the puzzled ruler could 
see nothing but an empty loom, but before 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the eager explanations of the enthusiastic 
weavers, who pointed out here a glowing 
dye, there a splendid pattern, and having 
regard to the non-committal countenances 
of the courtiers, the king nodded sagely 
and waited developments. 

"Best of all. Sire," cried the cheerful 
rogues, "so magical is this robe we weave, 
that only those can see it whose tongue 
has never uttered a lie, whose hands have 
never taken a bribe." 

Rises thereupon instant chorus of praise 
of the beautiful fabric from a unanimous 
court. Next day a solemn procession 
through the streets of the capital to dis- 
play to the world the magic robe. Amazed 
multitude staring at the king in pompous 
dishabille, but hearing the courtiers' ad- 
miring cries, no man willing to admit his 
own blindness — when up speaks Tire- 
some Child: "Mother, why does the king 
ride abroad in his shirt ? " 

General outburst of mortified veracity, 
and futile search for the discreetly vanished 
adventurers. 

So ends the story. But nothing of the 
sort really took place. Instead, Fenfant 

3 



THE SECRET LIFE 

terrible was slapped and put to bed, to 
meditate upon his ill-timed outspokenness, 
and next day, and all the days thereafter, 
sees what his companions see. I know, 
because I myself am that Tiresome Child, 
and because my uncomfortable eyes refuse 
to see the imaginary robe in which so many 
kings of this world are dressed I have 
spent a large part of my life in disgrace. 
At last and tearfully I have learned to 
hold my tongue, but when the tricksome 
spirits of Mid-summer Eve are abroad, I 
get out pen and paper and, where no pious 
ear can be violated, secretly vent my elderly 
naughtinesses. My respectable acquaint- 
ances will be all the safer in consequence 
that I have an inviolable confidant of the 
real thoughts that lie behind my but slightly 
wrinkled brow and unreveaHng eyes. 
Thackeray once said, "If women's eyes 
could only be dragged, what queer things 
one might learn." . . . Ah, the Secret 
Life! — who among us can guess at the 
thoughts that are concealed behind the 
clear brows and frank-seeming eyes of even 
those nearest us ? 
We live our lives draped and masked 
4 



THE SECRET LIFE 

in our own bodies; forcing those bodies to 
speak the words, perform the actions ex- 
pected from them, while we dwell alone 
within, thinking and wishing what we 
never, or rarely, express. It is this that 
drives us to diaries — the need to some- 
where, somehow, speak the truth in a world 
of conformable lies. It is of no use to 
slip aside our masks or raise our dra- 
peries for an instant, in the hope that our 
fellows will recognize a hand or an eye like 
their own, and that thereupon even one 
of our companions will invite us to come 
out from under our robe and walk about 
with him friendlily, without disguise. In- 
stead our companion makes signs of dis- 
tress and resentment through the veil of 
his concealment, and we hastily readjust 
the mask and domino and resist further 
temptation to find a heart akin. 

"It takes," says Thoreau, "two to tell 
the truth — one to speak and another to 
hear." 

Called upon once to help a grief-stricken 
mother to lay away the belongings of a boy 
summoned suddenly out of life, we un- 
earthed among his abandoned treasures 

5 



THE SECRET LIFE 

a curious collection of odds and ends con- 
cerning which we could imagine no value 
that should have moved him to keep them 
by him. A shell, a bit of ribbon, a rusty 
nail; scraps of paper with a scribbled line 
or two; cuttings, whose printed words re- 
ferred to nothing which seemed to bear in 
any way upon what we might guess of as 
touching his life. 

"I thought I knew every fibre of his 
heart," cried the mother in sudden tears, 
"and yet of all these strange things he 
seems to have treasured so carefully I can- 
not divine the meaning of a single one!" 
A whole world of ambitions, interests, and 
sentiments foreign to her he had carried 
away into eternal silence. 

If I shall have persistence sufficient to 
continue this Heretic Diary, I am afraid 
it will find itself stuffed with an equally 
absurd number of my secret loves and 
hates, of the intolerable opinions for which 
I have been slapped and put to bed, of all 
the sentimental rubbish I carry about with 
me in a fardel under my mask and domino 
— the poor inconsequential treasures of my 
secret fife. 

6 



THE SECRET LIFE 

July 7. 

Amiers Journal: — I have been reading 
it with the half impatient interest which 
such books always arouse — in An 
me at least. It is a more agreeable Optimistic 
book, however, than Marie Bash- ^^^' 
kirtseff's disingenuous posings, or Rous- 
seau's vulgar, insulting confidences. One 
is impatient with the bore who talks about 
himself when one is impatient to bore him 
about one's own self, and yet, somehow, 
one is fascinated by the hope of getting 
behind the mask of personality. 

I learned to read French that I might 
possess the contents of the ''Confessions." 
George Eliot called it the most interesting 
book she knew, which fired my ambition 
to read it. With the aid of a dictionary, 
the four great volumes were got through 
somehow, and when the task was accom- 
pHshed, though I loathed Rousseau, I had 
enough French to serve roughly for both 
reading and speech. 

What ambition and courage one had in 
those days! I studied French while I did 
the churning. Remembering the strength 

7 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and persistency of that time I wonder 
that I have come to middle age and done 
nothing. Athletic trainers say that there 
is in every one only a fixed capacity for 
development. One may reach that Hmit 
readily, and once reached no toil or pa- 
tience will ever carry the power of the 
muscles beyond it by the smallest part of 
a fraction. Mentally, the same probably 
holds good. My capacity was, no doubt, 
always small. So far as it went the cramp- 
ing, unpropitious circumstances of youth 
had no power to chill it, but prosperity, 
leisure, opportunity, could not add one 
jot to its possibilities. . . . 

In all these journals what I find inter- 
esting is not so much what the writer says 
as what he reveals unintentionally. 

The impression Aniiel leaves upon the 
reader is that he was at least a gentleman 
— that he had a gentle soul; clean and 
modest, continent and grave. His mel- 
ancholy seems neither so profound nor 
so touching as Mrs. Humphrey Ward and 
his other critics would have one believe. 
At least it is neither tragic nor torturing. 
He gives the impression of saying "I have 

8 



THE SECRET LIFE 

no bread — but, " he adds cheerfully, after 
a moment's reflection, "the Lord will 
provide." 

He is not rebellious. In moments of 
the most real gravity, when he is face to 
face with death, he clings to the egotistic 
superstition that perhaps — most probably 
— there is somewhere some wise kind 
Power deeply interested in his doings, his 
emotions, his future. He is profoundly 
convinced that it is important how he 
feels, how he bears himself. He has no 
sense at all of the blind nullity of things. 
He asserts this nullity to be unthinkable. 

All this is surprising when one remem- 
bers the insistence of his commentators 
upon the intense modernity of his mind. 
Is this modern ? I cannot see wherein it 
differs from the spirit of the past. Such 
natures were not uncommon in other cen- 
turies — as was the nature of Erasmus for 
example. . . . 

The man had no passion. He did not 
marry because, he says, he demanded 
perfection; could not find or give it, and 
therefore resigned himself cheerfully to 
celibacy. Passion, of course, would have 

9 



THE SECRET LIFE 

blinded his eyes to imperfections; having 
none, his eyes were always clear. ... It 
is perhaps in this passionlessness that he 
is most modern. Most of us no longer 
demand perfection. Knowing it to be un- 
attainable, modern common sense cheer- 
fully agrees to abandon desire for it. This 
is visible in our literature, in art, in love. 
No one reads or buys long poems any more, 
therefore the poets never contemplate a 
new Paradise Lost. No one paints heroic 
pictures, for they are not salable. The 
grandiose has no market and therefore 
grows obsolete. The law of supply and 
demand rules there as elsewhere. Passion 
and the perfection it longs and strives for 
is demode. 

July 20. 

F is dead, and with the announce- 
ment by cable this morning comes a belated 

A Poet letter from M , full of hope and 

Sheep- encouragement. A sudden rally 
rancher, j^^j made her believe in a possi- 
bihty of recovery — no doubt it was that 
last flare which comes often just as the 
oil fails and the light is about to go out. 
10 



THE SECRET LIFE 

My mind has been full of amazement 
all day. It is so difficult to realize that a 
strong, aggressive personality is finally and 
definitely extinguished. I have been think- 
ing of their odd, romantic story. He must 
have had great seductive power — not 
easily realizable now — to have come into 
her life and have persuaded her to abandon 
everything to follow him. I have heard 
her tell the story often. The tall young 
sheep-rancher from New Zealand, with 
his burning eyes and his pockets full of 
sonnets, appearing one morning, and she 
suddenly abandons her briUiant position, 
her jointure, her two orphan boys, and goes 
away, despite the furious outcries of her 
family and friends, with a man seven years 
her junior; goes into the wilderness with 
him. New Zealand of more than a quarter 
of a century ago being decidedly wilder- 
ness, yet she calls those the happiest years 
of her Hfe — spent in a shanty fifty miles 
from the nearest neighbour! She likes to 
recall the wild scrambles among the moun- 
tains; the wrestles to save the sheep from 
the spring floods; the vigils; the dances 
to which they rode on mountain ponies, 

II 



THE SECRET LIFE 

sixty or seventy miles; the makeshifts; the 
caring for flocks and shepherds in the stress 
of heat and cold, of sickness and sorrow; 
and the snow-bound nights beside the fire, 
when the sonnets came to the fore again. 
After all it was youth, and love, and adven- 
ture; why shouldn't she have been happy? 
And she was justified in her faith. When 
I came to know them the detrimental 
young sheep-rancher moved in a world 
of gilded aides-de-camp, with sentries and 
mounted escorts attending his steps, sur- 
rounded by tropical pomp and spacious 
luxury, and now, alas! he is but one more 
unit in the yearly tribute of flesh and 
blood demanded by England's Equatorial 
Empire. 

A handsome, brilliant, charming crea- 
ture. The generation is the poorer for 
the loss of his graceful, cynical wit. He 
belonged to the generation who formed 
their ideals of manners upon Pelham and 
Vivian Grey. It was Byronism translated 
into prose. M says he bore his suf- 
ferings — enormous sufferings — with the 
light and humorous courage with which 
it was the ideal of the fine gentleman of 

12 



THE SECRET LIFE 

his period to face all unpleasant situa- 
tions. 

September 4. 

The S — s came in last night after dinner. 
They cling to the old fashion, common in 
England before the advent of An Eaten 
afternoon tea, of having the tray ^^®- 
brought in about ten o'clock, so I tried 
it to-night because of them, and found it 
not a bad idea. 

Simple, agreeable folk they are, of what 
is called in Scotland the middle classes. 
That is to say, they follow some commercial 
calling: I am not sure of its exact nature. 
They are very well educated in just the 
way which differentiates the British middle- 
class education from the other sort — they 
speak several modern languages fluently, 
and know little of the classics. All their 
learning is sound, unornamental, utiHtarian. 
Some reference was made to a kinsman 
in a foreign town which I had visited. I 
could not recall any association with the 
name until the elder brother said quite 
simply and without any self-consciousness: 

"He is Jones of Jones & Co. (a large 
13 



THE SECRET LIFE 

haberdasher in P ) — you may have 

been in his shop." 

It was nicely done. I doubt if an Ameri- 
can could have achieved it in quite the 
same way. If he had made the confidence 
it would have been made with bravado, 
or he would have explained that the shop 
was an "emporium." 

The girl has such a good restful British 
calm about her — I felt it after she was 
gone. It arises, I think, from lack of 
any special interest in the impression she 
makes upon others. All the rest of us — 
we Americans — were desirous of being 
agreeable, amusing — of making a good 
effect. We were consciously sympathetic, 
consciously vivacious, consciously civil. 
She was just herself; we might take or 
leave her as she was. It never occurred to 
her to attempt to be different for our sakes. 
The result of it is very reposeful. One is 
always conscious of a sense of strain in 
American society for this reason. It is 
because of that desire to impress, to please, 
that American voices in conversation grow 
sharp and hurried, that American faces 
grow keen and lined. We have a tradition 

14 



THE SECRET LIFE 



that English women are dull and bovine, 
but no doubt they make the better mothers 
because of it. They hoard their energies 
to give to their sons. They bring their 
children into the world with deep reserves 
of strength. I have often observed the 
great superiority of English men over 
Americans in the capacity for long, sus- 
tained, unflinching labour. I am sure they 
owe that to the immense fund of unex- 
hausted power given them by their mothers, 
who are profound wells of calm vitahty. 
It is the old story of being unable to eat 
one's cake and have it too. American 
women eat their cake in the form of a 
higher exhilaration in existence, but when 
the drain of creation comes they have 
nothing save nervous energy to give. The 
rest of the cake has already been devoured. 
There are no reserves for the child to call 
upon. 

I beUeve that Englishmen — without 
reasoning upon the matter — feel this 
instinctively. They vastly prefer their own 
women as mates. I have rarely known 
an Englishman to marry an American 
woman who had not the extrinsic attrac- 
ts 



THE SECRET LIFE 

tion of wealth. They do not hesitate to 
marry penniless countrywomen of their 
own. 

September 12. 

A was here to-day. What a formal 

Concerning little soul it is! She Can never be- 
Eibowson gin where she left off. One has 
the Table, j^^^. acquaintance to make all over 
again each time she comes. 

The depths, the heights of her propriety! 
. . . Always that extremely well behaved 

look, which never changes. P says, 

"A is too modest to take off and put 

on expressions in public." 

One wonders if there is any privacy so 
entire that she would consider dishevel- 
ment of behaviour permissible. How ex- 
hausting to herself such flawless respect- 
ability must become! 

She is the concentrated essence of the 
bourgeoisie. A savage can be natural; 
he knows nothing else, but when his eyes 
are opened and he sees himself to be naked 
the reign of the fig-leaf begins. There is 
something pathetic in that long era of pro- 
found distrust of his own nature and im- 

16 



THE SECRET LIFE 

pulses. What does he think he would do 
if he let himself go ? 

Perhaps he is, underneath all that pro- 
priety, still so close to savagery that he 
dare not trust himself to be natural lest 
he instantly relapse into barbarism. After 
many generations of breeding he dare be 
savage and free again if he like — he is so 

sure of himself. As Mrs. B says, he 

becomes at last "A man who can afford to 
put his elbows on the table." 

When he reaches such a point I notice 
he is always impatient of the constraint 
of those still bound by the shackles of self- 
conscious propriety, forgetting that he owes 
his own freedom to many generations that 
laboured in bonds, struggling to slay or 
subdue the savage. . . . 

October 14. 

A bird sat on the balcony rail just out- 
side my window to-day gossiping with an 
unseen neighbour perched some- An 
where out of my range of vision. Autumn 
He was rather a grimy little person, ^^ 
and as the day was cold he made a perfect 
puff ball of himself. I listened to them 

17 



THE SECRET LIFE 



conversing with great interest, feeling, as 
I always do when I hear birds talk, that if 
I only paid a little closer attention it would 
be possible to understand all they say. 
It is somewhat the same sensation one has 
in overhearing a rapid dialogue in French 
which one is too lazy to try to follow. 
When I came through I think I left some 
of the doors ajar behind me, and I remem- 
ber my bird avatar especially clearly. Even 
yet, when autumn comes, I am pursued by 
a fluttering longing to arise and go south- 
ward. I feel that something beautiful — 
some wide splendid ecstasy is calling me 
if I will only go to meet it. I can remem- 
ber having that sensation in my earliest 
childhood. In my dreams I often fly, with 
beautiful swoopings and balancings, with 
sudden confident droppings, through the 
elastic air, and sometimes I am in an en- 
closed place, beating my wings against 
the bounds, knowing no other way to get 
out. . . . 

When I look at birds they seem to know 
me. Not in the way of a mere creature 
who puts out crumbs in convenient break- 
fasting places, or who brings strawberries 

i8 



THE SECRET LIFE 

to one's cage, but they meet my eye with 
that famiUarity one sees in the glance of 
brothers — a look of mutual understand- 
ing. My own sense is of kinship of the 
closest character. I understand how they 
regard things — what they think and feel. 
I wish I could so concentrate my attention 
as to catch what this grimy little citizen 
is saying to his fellow on the nearby ledge. 
If I could, what a flood of other memories 
it would restore that are now dim and con- 
fused. 

November i. 

I dreamed last night that I wore upon 
my breast a great necklace of flat golden 
plates cut in the shape of winged john-a'- 
things, and these were linked to- Dreams, 
gether with other flat plates of turquoise. 
My garments were of white semi-trans- 
parent stuffs, and my limbs and body 
showed through it. Before me stood a 
building of some sort, creamy yellow in 
colour and of a style of architecture with 
which I am not familiar — though it seemed 
familiar enough to me in my dreams. Now 
I have only a confused sense of low domes 

19 



THE SECRET LIFE 

set upon massive cubes. I was waiting 
for the sun to rise. The air was warm 
and dry and that white glamour of the 
dawning Hght lay upon the surrounding 
country, which seemed flat and not very 
verdant. Suddenly the rays of the sun, 
which rose apparently immediately be- 
hind this dome, spread out about it Hke 
an aureole (Gavin Douglas's ** Golden 
fanys'') — and this seemed a signal for me 
to lift my arms above my head and recite 
a sort of litany — and then — it all passed 
away. . . . 

Most of one's dreams are confused and 
blurred by a sense of conflicting person- 
alities. There is generally a sort of impres- 
sion that while the incidents are apparently 
happening to one's self, they are happening 
in reality to some other being, not quite 
one's self; but this one was very clear, 
with no arriere pensee. I have worked 
out a theory which seems to me to quite 
solve the mystery of dreams. 

Lifelong familiarity with the phenomena 
of sleep — with the trooping phantoms 
that inhabit slumber's dusk realm — has 
so dulled our wonder at the mystery of 

20 



THE SECRET LIFE 

our double existence of the dark that night 
after night we open with calm incurious- 
ness the door into that ghostly underworld, 
where we hold insane revels with fantastic 
spectres, babble with fooHsh laughter at 
witless jests, stain our souls with useless 
crime, or fly with freezing blood from the 
grasp of unnamable horrors, and with the 
morning we saunter serenely back from 
these adventures into the warm precincts 
of the cheerful day, unmoved, unstartled, 
and forgetting. 

The hypnotists, because they can make 
a man feel pain or pleasure without ma- 
terial cause, are gaped upon with awed 
surprise by the same man who once every 
twenty-four hours of his life, with no more 
magic potion than healthy fatigue, with no 
greater weapon for wonder working than a 
pillow, may create for himself phantasmal 
illusions beside which all mesmeric sugges- 
tions are but the flattest of commonplace. 

The naive egotism of superstition saw 
in the movements of the solar system only 
prognostications concerning its own bean 
crop, and could discern nothing in the 
dream-world but the efforts of the super- 

21 



THE SECRET LIFE 

natural powers to communicate, in their 
usual shuffling and incompetent fashion, 
with man. The modern revolt from this 
childishness has swung the pendulum of 
interest in dreams so far up the other curve 
of the arc that there seems now to be a 
foolish fear of attaching any importance 
whatever to the strange experiences of 
sleep, and as a result an unscientific avoid- 
ance of the whole subject. The conse- 
quence of this absurd revulsion is that in 
a period of universal investigation one of 
the most curious functions of the brain is 
left unexamined and unexplained. 

Some dabbling there has been, with 
results of little more value than were the 
contents of the greasy, bethumbed dream- 
books of the eighteenth-century milkmaid 
or apprentice. The labour bestowed upon 
the matter has been mainly directed to 
efforts to prove the extreme rapidity with 
which dreams pass through the mind, and 
that it is some trivial outward cause at the 
very instant of awakening — such as a 
noise, a light, or a blow — which rouses 
the brain to this miraculous celerity of 
imaginative creation. 

22 



THE SECRET LIFE 

The persistent assertion that a dream 
occurs only at the moment of awakening 
shows how little real attention has been 
given to the matter, since the most casual 
observation of **the dog that hunts in 
dreams" would have shown that he may 
be "chasing the wild deer and following 
the roe" in the grey Kingdom of Seeming 
without breaking his slumbers. He will 
start and twitch, and give tongue after the 
phantom quarry he dreams he is pursuing, 
and yet continue his sleep without an 
interval. But have it whichever way one 
likes, the heart of the mystery is not yet 
discovered. How do they explain why a 
noise or a gleam of light — such as the 
waking senses know familiarly — should 
at this magical moment of rousing cause 
the brain to create with inconceivable 
rapidity a crowd of phantasmagoria in 
order to explain to itself the familiar phe- 
nomena of light and sound ? 

Dr. Friederich Scholz, in his recent 
volume upon ** Sleep and Dreams," gives 
an example of rapid effort of the mind to 
explain the sensations felt by the sleeping 
body: 

23 



THE SECRET LIFE 

"I dreamed of the Reign of Terror, saw 
scenes of blood and murder, appealed 
before the Revolutionary Tribunal, saw 
Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, all 
the personages of that time of horrors, 
argued with them, was finally, after a num- 
ber of occurrences, condemned to death, 
was carried to the place of execution on a 
cart through enormous masses of people, 
was bound by the executioner to the board. 
The knife fell and I felt my head severed 
from my body. Thereupon I awoke and 
found that a loosened rod of the bed had 
fallen on my neck like the knife of the 
guillotine, and this had happened, my 
mother assured me, at the very moment 
when I awoke." . . . 

That the mind should, merely because 
of the body's sleep, be able to create a whole 
scene of a terrible drama with a rapidity 
impossible when all the functions are awake 
and active is incredible. The only function 
of the brain capable of this lightning-like 
swiftness of vision is memory. To create 
requires a certain effort, consumes a certain 
period of time, but a scene once beheld, 
an adventure once experienced and vividly 

24 



THE SECRET LIFE 

impressed upon the memory, can be re- 
called in its minutest details in a period 
of time too short to be reckonable. 

That the sensitive plate of the brain 
never loses any clear picture once received, 
has been demonstrated beyond doubt. The 
picture, the sensation, may be overlaid 
and hidden for a long time beneath the 
heaps of useless lumber that the days and 
years accumulate in the mind's storehouse, 
but need or accident, or a similarity of 
circumstance, will bring the forgotten be- 
longing to light — sometimes with start- 
ling effect. There is the well-known in- 
stance of a girl who, during an attack of 
fever delirium, spoke in a language that 
no one about her could understand. In- 
vestigation proved it to be Welsh — a lan- 
guage of which, both before and after her 
illness, she was totally ignorant. Further 
investigation showed that being born in 
Wales she had understood the tongue as a 
very little child, but had afterwards com- 
pletely forgotten it. 

It is commonly known that in the struggle 
of the body against death by water, the 
memory, stirred to furious effort, produces 

25 



THE SECRET LIFE 

all her stores at once — probably in the 
frantic endeavour to find some experience 
which may be of use in this crisis. 

It is often broadly asserted that the 
memory retains each and every experience 
which life has presented for its contem- 
plation, but this is hardly true. The 
memory makes to a certain extent a choice, 
and chooses oftentimes with apparent ca- 
price. To demonstrate the truth of this, 
let one endeavour to recall the first impres- 
sion retained by his childish mind and it 
usually proves to be something extremely 
trivial. My own first clear memory is a 
sense of the comfort to my tired little two- 
year-old body of the clean linen sheets of 
the bed at the end of a perilous and adven- 
turous journey, of whose startling inci- 
dents my memory preserved only one. 
Often this capricious faculty will seize 
upon some few high lights in a vivid picture 
and reject all the unimportant details. 
As a rule, however, it is the profound 
stirring of the emotions which wakes the 
memory to activity. A woman never for- 
gets her first lover. A man to the end of 
his life can recall his first triumph, or his 

26 



THE SECRET LIFE 

most imminent danger, and a trifle will 
often, after the lapse of half a century, 
fill the eye with tears, make the cheek burn, 
or the heart beat with the power of the 
long-passed emotion, preserved living and 
fresh by the memory. 

That the memory uses in sleep the 
material it has gathered during the day, 
and during the whole life, no dreamer will 
deny; but here again it is capricious; some 
parts of the day's — the life's — experi- 
ences are used, others rejected. Added 
to these natural and explicable possessions 
of the memory are a mass of curious, con- 
flicting, tangled thoughts, which are foreign 
to our whole experience of existence, and 
which, when confused with our own mem- 
ories, makes of our nights a wild jumble 
of useless and foolish pictures. If it be 
true that it is by some outward impression 
upon the senses that dreams are evoked, 
that it is the endeavours of the somnolent 
mind to explain to itself the meaning of a 
noise, a light, a blow, which creates that de- 
lusion we call dreams, then it is not upon 
the stores of our own memories alone that 
the brain draws for material, since the fall- 

27 



THE SECRET LIFE 

ing rod awoke in the mind of Dr. Scholz a 
picture of the French revolution, which he 
had never seen, and different in detail and 
vividness from any picture his reading had 
furnished. 

Heredity is an overworked jade, too 
often driven in double harness with a 
hobby; but the Hnk between generation 
and generation is so strong and so close 
that none may lightly tell all the strands 
of which it is woven, nor from whence were 
spun the threads that tie us to the past. 
It is very certain, despite the theories of 
Weismann, that the acquired character- 
istics of the parent may be transmitted 
to the child. The boy whose father walked 
the quarter-deck is, nine times out of ten, 
as certain to head for salt water as a sea- 
gull born in a hen's nest. The victim of 
ill-fortune and prisoner of despair who 
breaks the jail of life to escape fate's malice 
leaves a dark tendency in the blood of his 
offspring, which again and again proves 
the terrible power of an inherited weak- 
ness. Women who lose their mind or 
become clouded in thought at childbirth — 
though they come of a stock of mens sana — 

28 



THE SECRET LIFE 

transmit the blight of insanity to their 
sons and daughters both; and not only 
consumptive tendencies and the appetite 
for drink are acquired in a lifetime and 
then handed on for generations, but prefer- 
ences, talents, manners, personal likeness — 
all may be the wretched burden or happy 
gift handed down to the son by the father. 
Who can say without fear of contradiction 
that the memories of passions and emotions 
that stirred those dead hearts to their 
centre may not be a part of our inheritance ? 
The setting, the connection, is gone, but 
the memory of the emotion remains. Such 
and such nerves have quivered violently 
for such or such a cause — the memory 
stores and transmits the impression, and 
a similar incident sets them tingling again, 
though two generations lie between. 

Certainly animals possess very distinctly 
these inherited memories. A young horse 
never before beyond the paddock and 
stables will fall into a very passion of fear 
when a snake crosses his path, or when 
driven upon a ferry to cross deep, swift 
water. He is entirely unfamiliar with the 
nature of the danger, but at some period 

29 



THE SECRET LIFE 

one of his kind has sweated and throbbed 
in hideous peril, and the memory remains 
after the lapse of a hundred years. He, 
no more than ourselves, can recall all the 
surrounding circumstances of that peril, 
but the threatening aspect of a similar 
danger brings memory forward with a rush 
to use her stored warning. When the 
migrating bird finds its way without diflli- 
culty, untaught and unaccompanied, to 
the South it has never seen, we call its 
guiding principle instinct — but what is the 
definition of the word instinct ? No man 
can give it. It but removes the difficulty 
one step backward. Call this instinct an 
inherited memory and the matter becomes 
clear. Such memories, it is plain, are 
more definite with the animals than with 
us ; but so are many of their faculties, hear- 
ing, smell, and sight. 

Everyone has felt many times in his life 
a sense of familiarity with incidents that 
have had no place in his own experience, 
and has found it impossible to offer any 
explanation for the feeling. Coming sud- 
denly around a turn of a hill upon a fair 
and unknown landscape, his heart may 
30 



THE SECRET LIFE 

bound with a keen sense of recognition 
of its unfamiliar outlines. In the midst of 
a tinghng scene of emotion, a sensation 
of the whole incident being a mere dull 
repetition will rob it of its joy or pain. 
A sentence begun by a friend is recognized 
as trite and old before it is half done, though 
it refers to matters new to the hearer. A 
sound, a perfume, a sensation, will awaken 
feehngs having no connection with the 
occasion. 

The first day I ever spent in a tropical 
country I was charmed with the excessive 
novelty of everything about me; but sud- 
denly that evening, being carried home in 
a chair by the coolie bearers, a flood of 
recognition poured over me like the waves 
of the sea, and for a few minutes the illusion 
was so strong as to leave me breathless 
with astonishment. I had the sense of 
having often done this before. The warm 
night, the padding of the bare feet in the 
dust, the hot smell of leaves, were all an 
old, trite experience. For days I struggled 
with that tormenting sense, with which we 
are all familiar, of being unable to recall 
a something, a name, that is perfectly well 
31 



THE SECRET LIFE 

known — is "on the tip of the tongue," 
as one says — but all in vain; and in time 
the recognition grew fainter and more elu- 
sive with each effort to grasp it, until it 
slipped forever away into darkness. If 
such experiences as these are not inherited 
memories, what are they ? 

With sleep, the will becomes dormant. 
Waking, it guards and governs; chooses 
what we shall do and be and think; stands 
sentinel over the mind and rejects all 
comers with which it is not famiUar. Un- 
less the thought comes from within the 
known borders of the body's own life, the 
will will have none of it. But overtaken 
by fatigue and sinking into slumber with 
the night, his domain is left fenceless and 
unpatrolled, for with the will goes his troop 
of watchmen, judgment, logic, deliberation, 
ethics; and memory, ungoverned and un- 
controlled, holds a feast of misrule. The 
barrier between past and present melts 
away; all his ancestors are merged into the 
individual; the events of the day are inex- 
tricably tangled with those of two cen- 
turies since, and this motley play of time 
is called a dream. 

32 



THE SECRET LIFE 

A man going back but to his great grand- 
parents has aheady fourteen direct pro- 
genitors, and is heir of such strange or 
striking episodes of their fourteen Hves as 
were sufficiently deeply impressed upon 
their memories to be transmittable. This 
alone is enough, one would think, to pro- 
vide all the nights with material for the 
queer kaleidoscopic jumbhng of leavings, 
with which the nimble mind diverts itself, 
turning over the leaves of its old picture- 
book alone in the dark while its sluggish 
comrade snores; but there is no reason to 
beheve that there is a limit to these inheri- 
tances. 

The most vivid sensation my night 
memory holds is of finding myself standing 
alone, high up in a vast arena. It is open 
to the sky and the night is falling swiftly 
and warm. Everyone has gone but my- 
self, but there is a tremulous sensation in 
my mind, as of very recent excitement, 
noise, and tumult. I am waiting for some- 
one who is coming through the arched 
door on the left, and I rise to go. I feel 
the rough coolness of the stone beneath 
my hand as I help myself to rise, and upon 

33 



THE SECRET LIFE 

my throat and bosom I have a sensation 
of the Ught wool of my garment. It has 
the vivid famiharity of a personal and per- 
fectly natural experience — so strong that, 
waking, I retain as keen a sense of it as if it 
were a happening of yesterday. I remem- 
ber many more dreams of this type — 
momentary flashes of sensation of the 
trivial things about me, such as all persons 
have felt in their waking lives, only that 
the things about me in my dreams are 
totally unfamiliar to my waking brain. 
In one of these I am emerging from the 
back door of a small white house — in- 
tensely white in the glare of a fierce sun. 
The house seems square and flat-topped, 
built of stone and with no windows visible 
here in the rear. It opens on a narrow 
street of similar residences. A man is with 
me, dressed in a long black robe and wear- 
ing a curious black head-dress. He is 
reproaching me and remonstrating vio- 
lently concerning my indifference in regard 
to religious matters. I look away, annoyed 
and bored by his vehemence, and the 
whole picture vanishes. It was as clear, as 
natural and familiar, as my own waking 

34 



THE SECRET LIFE 

life, while it lasted. . . . The narrow street 
of white houses seemed the only possible 
form for a street. I had no consciousness 
of anything different or more modern. 
The man's eager, stern face, with the heavy 
beard and the high head-dress, looked in 
no way strange or unfamiliar. With that 
double consciousness with which we are 
all familiar when awake, I watched the 
movement of his lips and the wagging of 
his beard as he talked, full of a sense of 
distaste, and thought, while listening to his 
flow of clear words, '*How tiresome these 
religious men are!'* 

Another time I was aware of standing 
in the dark, sword in hand (I seemed to be 
a man and the seeming was not strange to 
me), listening with furious pulses to a con- 
fusion of clashing blades and stamping of 
feet. Under the surface of passionate ex- 
citement the deeper sub-consciousness said: 
"All is lost! The conspiracy is a failure!" 
I was aware of a cool bravado which recog- 
nized the uselessness of attempting escape. 
The dice had been thrown — they had 
turned up wrong, that was all. Yet so 
vigorous and courageous was the heart of 

35 



THE SECRET LIFE 

this man that he was still buoyantly un- 
afraid. There was a rush of bodies by 
him; the door swung back against him, 
crushing him to the wall, and a few moments 
later, under guard, he was passing through 
a long, low corridor of stone. The torches 
showed the groined arch above him, and, 
a cell being unlocked, for the first time he 
felt afraid. Inside was a big bear with a 
collar about its neck, and two villainous- 
faced mountebanks sat surHly upon the 
floor. The man was very much afraid at 
the thought of such companions, for his 
hands were tied and he had no sword; 
yet he reasoned jovially with his guards, 
not wishing to show his real terror. After 
some protests his sword was returned to 
him and he stepped inside, again cheer- 
fully confident. The door clanged to be- 
hind him and the dream faded. All the 
conditions of the dream, the change of sex, 
the strange clothes and faces, the arched 
corridor, the men with the bear, seemed 
to my senses perfectly natural. They were 
quite commonplace, and of course. For 
the most part, however, my dreams are 
the fantastic hodge-podge common to 

36 



THE SECRET LIFE 

dreamers, such as might resuh from the 
unsorted, unclassified memories of a thou- 
sand persons flung down in a heap together 
and grasped without choice. One curi- 
ous fact I have noted is that though I am 
a wide and omnivorous reader, I have 
never had a dream or impression in sleep 
which might not have, been part of the 
experience of some one of European or 
American ancestry. I am an ardent reader 
of travel and adventure, but never have I 
imagined myself in Africa, nor have the 
landscapes of my dreams been other than 
European or American. 

Mr. Howells, in ''True I Talk of 
Dreams," added confirmation on this point 
by saying that he had never been able 
to discover a dreamer who had seen in his 
dreams a dragon or any such beast of 
impossible proportions. 

It suggests itself — en passant — that 
dragons and other such "fearful wild fowl'* 
are not uncommon in the cataclysmic 
visions of delirium, but perhaps the potency 
of fever, of drugs, of alcohol, or of mania, 
may open up deeps of memory, of primor- 
dial memory, that are closed to the milder 



THE SECRET LIFE 

magic of sleep. The subtle poison in the 
grape may gnaw through the walls of Time 
and give the memory sight of those terrible 
days when we wallowed — nameless shapes 
— in the primaeval slime. Who knows 
whether Alexander the Great, crowning 
himself with the gold of Bedlam's straws, 
may not be only forgetful of the years that 
gape between him and his kingly Mace- 
donian ancestor ? Even Horatio's philoso- 
phy did not plumb all the mysteries of life 
and of heredity. 

Another interesting fact, in this connec- 
tion, is that those who come of a class who 
have led narrow and uneventful lives for 
generations dream but little, and that 
dully and without much sensation; while 
the children of adventurous and travelled 
ancestors — men and women whose pas- 
sions have been profoundly stirred — have 
their nights filled with the movement **of 
old forgotten far-off things and battles 
long ago." Again, it is a fact that many 
persons, while hovering on the borders of 
sleep, but still vaguely conscious, are ac- 
customed to see pictures of all manner of 
disconnected things — many of them scenes 

38 



THE SECRET LIFE 

or faces which have never had part in their 
waking Hfe — drifting slowly across the 
darkness of the closed Hd like the pictures 
of a magic lantern across a sheet stretched 
to receive them, and these, by undiscern- 
ible gradations, lead the sleeper away into 
the land of dreams, the dim treasure 
house of memory and the past. 

If a dream is a memory, then the 
stories of their momentary duration are 
easily credible. The falling rod upon the 
sleeper's neck might recall, as by a light- 
ning flash, some scene in the Red Terror 
in which his ancestor participated — an 
ancestor so nearly allied, perhaps, to the 
victim suffering under the knife as to know 
all the agonies vicariously, and leave the 
tragedy bitten into his memory and his 
blood forever. 

When the words heredity or instinct 
are contemplated in their broad sense they 
mean no more than inherited memory. 
The experiences of many generations teach 
the animal its proper food and methods of 
defence. The fittest survive because they 
have inherited most clearly the memories 
of the best means of securing nourishment 

39 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and escaping enemies. The marvellous 
facility gradually acquired by artisans who 
for generations practise a similar craft is 
but the direct transmission of the brain's 
treasures. 

In sleep the brain is peculiarly active in 
certain directions, not being distracted by 
the multitude of impressions constantly 
conveyed to it by the five senses, and ex- 
periments with hypnotic sleepers prove 
that some of its functions become in sleep 
abnormally acute and vigorous. Why not 
the function of memory ? The possessions 
which during the waking hours were use- 
less, and therefore rejected by the will, 
surge up again, vivid and potent, and troop 
before the perception unsummoned, motley 
and fantastic; serving no purpose more 
apparent than do the idle, disconnected 
recollections of one's waking moments of 
dreaminess — and yet it may hap, withal, 
that the tireless brain, forever turning over 
and over its heirlooms in the night, is seek- 
ing here an inspiration, or there a memory, 
to be used in that fierce and complex 
struggle called Life. 



40 



THE SECRET LIFE 

November 6. 

G was talking yesterday about the 

"Sonnets from the Portuguese.'* TheFoun- 
Liked them. Thought them the tain of 
high-water mark of Feminine ^aimacis. 
Poetry. . . . 

Alas, then, for that capitaHzed variety 
of verse! 

To me these sonnets are extremely dis- 
agreeable. There is a type of man whose 
love is intolerably odious in all its manifes- 
tations to a wholesome woman. She feels 
that he is too nearly akin to her own sex 
for his love to seem a natural, virile thing. 
Other men never appear to guess this cause 
of persistent lack of success with women. 

They say: "Jones is a good fellow — 
modest, clean-minded, gentle, — why is he 
so unlucky with women ? The truth is, 
women like brutes." 

The underlying femininity of Jones is 
not repulsive to them. They probably 
feel, however, the same repugnance for the 
tendernesses of women who are too nearly 
akin to themselves. 

The Greeks seem to have thought about 
41 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and observed this. From their keen vision 
none of the phenomena of Ufe, apparently, 
was hid, and they were quite aware of this 
occasional confusion of the nature and per- 
son of the sex. As usual they typified it 
and invented legends about it, though they 
were not, of course, aware of its cause — 
the atavistic tendency to throw back to the 
primordial condition when both sexes ex- 
isted in the same individual; but then they 
were poets and not scientists. They got at 
essential truths by instinct and revealed 
their knowledge by beautiful suggestion 
rather than by exact analysis. The dry- 
as-dusts fail even yet to see that their mar- 
bles and legends are as valuable in the 
study of life as German theses. 

**The Sonnets from the Portuguese" give 
me the unwholesome, uncomfortable sense 
that one gets from those unlucky feminine 
men and masculine women. They mingle 
in a disagreeable fashion the pride and 
reserve of the woman who receives worship 
and the abandon and aggressiveness of the 
man who sues. 

One wonders why women cannot write 
poetry ? — or rather, to speak with more 
42 



THE SECRET LIFE 

exactness — are never poets. Once or 
twice in their lives, perhaps, they may speak 
with sacred fire, but they are never, in the 
full meaning of the word, poets. They 
cannot rise out of themselves. 

Gosse says of Mrs. Browning: **She was 
not striving to produce an effect; she was 
trying with all the effort of which her spirit 
was capable to say exactly what was in her 
heart." 

There is the whole secret of the feminine 
failure in art. It always degenerates into an 
attempt to express, not humanity, but the 
individual woman. Woman is inevitably 
personal. She still sits alone at the door of 
her wigwam. Of humanity, she is ignorant, 
and to it is, moreover, indifferent. 

Mrs. Browning was only once shaken 
out of herself — when she wrote that fine 
plaint "De Profundis" — voicing the griefs 
of the many in teUing of her own. After 
all, a portrait of one's self only is not art, 
or is art in its most limited form. Aurora 
Leigh and all the rest are simply Elizabeth 
Barrett masking under other names. How- 
ever much the hand may resemble Esau's, 
the voice is always the voice of Jacob. 

43 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Byron had these same feminine limi- 
tations — "dressing up" (as the children 
say) as a Pirate, a Turk, or the like, and 
reciting a rhymed Baedeker for the benefit 
of the untravelled; but whether Pirate or 
Giaour, always unmistakably Byron. 

What the women with poetic gifts can 
do is to translate delightfully. Mrs. Brown- 
ing's translations of Heine are quite the 
best in existence. Emma Lazarus made 
an English version of "Une Nuit de Mai'* 
that is almost more delightful than the 
original. She might have enriched our 
treasury of verse with priceless trans- 
ferences; instead of which she wasted her 
gifts upon unimportant "expressions of 
herself." 

November 20. 

A says there is no definite, abstract 

standard of beauty or perfection. 

We were talking of Jean de Reszke*s 

Siegfried. A was completely satisfied 

Two with it. I explained that he was 

Siegfrieds. gQ Q^jy because he had not seen 

Alvary in the part. A was sure that 

even if he had done so de Reszke might 

44 



THE SECRET LIFE 

still be best to his taste; asserting again 
that there was no ideal good in art, but 
only preference. Of course he does say 
this for the very reason that I advanced — 
because he had not seen Alvary. 

Poor beautiful young creature! He died 
recently in Germany in horrible, useless, 
ridiculous pain. Wagner, I am sure, would 
have thought him the ideal Siegfried, for 
he never made vocal gymnastics a fetish, 
but demanded satisfaction for the eye as 
much as for the ear. 

Alvary's Siegfried was the very embodi- 
ment of splendid, golden, joyous youth. 
Balmung beaten into shape, he sprang 
from the forge, whirling it and laughing at 
its glitter as an ecstatic child might. The 
splitting of the anvil was the mere sudden 
caprice of youthful bravado and mischief. 
He looked about for an instant to find 
something on which to test his new toy, 
and struck the iron in half as a boy would 
snip off the head of a daisy with his new 
whip. All his movements had the unpre- 
meditatedness of youth. 

Drunk with the struggle and the triumph 
of his contest with the dragon, he killed 

45 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Mime more to sate this new lust of power 
than to mete out justice or due punish- 
ment. He threw himself, sweating with 
exertion, and swelling with a new realiza- 
tion of his manhood, upon the grasses by 
the stream, and as the breezes cooled his 
body and spirit, and the soft peace of the 
green world stole upon him, romance woke 
in his face and voice: the rough uncouth- 
ness of boyhood fell away like a discarded 
garment. 

Who that once saw and heard it can ever 
forget those fresh tones or that slim-waisted 
boy wandering away into the sunlit forest, 
his beautiful dreaming face Ufted yearn- 
ingly to the thrilling bird voice that sang 
of love ? . . . Youth seeking passion — the 
sleeping woman ringed with fire. 

Ah me ! — all our hearts ached after 
him; after our own splendid moment. 

It is useless to say that this is not abso- 
lute beauty. It is impossible that a heavy- 
footed tenor (whose belt would have served 
for a saddle girth) with a square Sclav 
head and pendulous cheeks can be equalized 
to the other by individual taste. Such taste 
is simply bad. 

46 



THE SECRET LIFE 

January 6. 

I have been reading Pater's "Greek 
Studies"; a volume which an a Door 
amiable friend presented to me as ^J^- 
a Christmas gift. 

It affects me physically as well as men- 
tally. I must lay the book down now and 
then, because I find my heart beats and 
my temples grow moist. It is as if its 
covers were doors opening into the other 
world — that world that is always just 
beyond one. 

I don't know whether it is a common 
experience, but from my earHest childhood 
I have always had a sort of belief that if 
one stooped very low, held one's breath, 
and made a bold spring, one would break 
through and under the barrier, and be 
There ! 

Or one might go very suddenly around 
a corner and be There. Always there was 
the sensation that it was lying just beyond, 
just outside of one's self, and that only a 
certain heaviness of the flesh, a certain 
lack of concentration of attention, pre- 
vented one's participation in it. 

47 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Twice the door almost opened. I sprang 
in spirit to cross the threshold, and there 
was — nothing. The door was slammed 
in my face, but I never forgot that I had 
nearly got through. It was like death. 
As if one's brain and heart had suddenly 
grown vast and vapourized. Pater's book 
rouses some echo of those sensations. 

I can't define what the other Ufe is. It is 
all around me. I feel it in the water when I 
swim — a sentiency. If I could only look 
close enough into the shifting depths, I 
should see — a hand clasped quickly enough 
would grasp — what always just evades. 

I feel it around me, breathing and watch- 
ing in the woods. It is what I cannot quite 
catch in the talk of the birds. It is what 
the animals say with their eyes. 

The Greeks understood it. They called it 
Pan, and Cybele, and Dionysus, or dryads in 
the woods, or nymphs in the fountain, but 
those were only terms by which they tried to 
express the inexpressible. It is so subtle — 
so intoxicating. It is like love — a reblend- 
ing with all the elements of nature. One 
aches and strains toward it, and yet feels a 
delicious, shuddering reluctance to know. 

48 



THE SECRET LIFE 



January 7. 

Oh High Heart of mine, 

Now list to a wonder! ^ti^^l 

-TL L 1 1- of Death. 

Ihou Shalt vent thy great rages 

In lightning and thunder. 

And the force of thy fury, more mighty than they, 

Shall rock mountains, and rip them asunder. 

When thou weepest, oh Heart! 

All thy bitter deploring 
In the white whirling rains 

Shall have anguished outpouring. 
And the salt and the sound of thy grief, like the sea. 
Shake the night with its sullen wild roaring. 

When thou lovest, oh Heart! 

Into sudden fierce flower, 
'Neath thy passionate breath 
In one rapturous hour. 
Earth shall blossom, all crimson and trembling with love, 
Stirred to heart by thy rage and thy power. 

Then, high Heart, be brave! 
This death is but rending 
Of limits that vexed, 

And the ultimate blending 
With the cosmical passions of Nature thine own. 
Made immortal, insatiate, unending. 

January 10. 

Boutet de Monvel, who had been lend- 
ing H a polite but obviously fatigued 

attention, got up with alacrity as jhe Curse 
the clock struck ten and bowed °* ^^^®^- 

49 



THE SECRET LIFE 

himself out, with that miUtary bend of 
the hips characteristic of French salutes. 

H passed his handkerchief around the 

top of his collar and said: 

''Damn Babel!" 

We all laughed. 

"Now, here," said H , indignantly, 

"is a man with a beautiful mind, a man 
full of beautiful thoughts and visions, and 
because of those infernal French verb in- 
flections, because they will call tables and 
chairs 'he' and *she' instead of *it,' I can't 
communicate with him without boring him 
to death. We English-speaking people 
are a great deal more lenient. Some of 
the pleasantest talks I've ever had have 
been with foreigners who waded through 
a slaughter of my native tongue to a posi- 
tive throne in my respect. But no foreigner 
can ever tolerate broken French or Spanish. 
They jump to the immediate conclusion 
that a man who can't speak their abomi- 
nable gibberish correctly must be either a 
boor or a fool, and they don't take the pains 
to conceal that impression. Why don't 
they learn to speak English, so that a human 
being could talk to them ? " 

50 



THE SECRET LIFE 

R told a story of recent experience in 

Italy, which he thought suggested an equal 
arrogance in the Anglo-Saxon. 

He had watched a young woman, an 
American, on the railway platform at 
Naples, explaining in lucid English to the 
porter her wishes concerning her luggage. 
The porter stared, shrugged, and seized 
a bag. The girl caught his arm. 

"Put that down," she said sternly. *'I 
mean that to go in the carriage with me. 
Those two trunks are to be labelled for 
Rome and put in the van." 

The porter began to gesticulate and 
gabble. 

** There's no use making so much noise," 
she commented contemptuously. "Just do 
as I tell you and don't lose time." 

The Italian hunched his shoulders, threw 
his hands out in fan-like gestures, and made 

volcanic appeals to heaven. R , who is 

shy, but chivalrous, and who speaks six 
Italian dialects, felt called upon to take part. 

"Excuse me. Madam," he said, "but 
you seem to be having some difficulty 
with your luggage. As I speak Italian, 
perhaps I may be of service to you." 
51 



THE SECRET LIFE 

The girl turned a cold eye upon him and 
waved him away. 

** Thank you," she said, "you are very 
kind, but all the world has got to speak 
English eventually, and there is no use 
indulging these people in their ridiculous 
Italian now!" 

January 14. 

I lunched with Mary R yesterday 

and heard a curious story. Mrs. M , 

^j^g who is ordinarily so amusing, 

Fourth seemed distrait and disturbed all 
Dimen- through the meal, and when the 

sion. . ° , , - ^ 

Other women had gone, Mary, 
who is extremely sensitive and sympathetic 
to the state of mind of everyone about her, 

led Mrs. M , in a manner fascinating 

in its skilfulness, to unpack her overladen 
spirit. 

She said: "I have been spending the 
morning with a friend, who is half mad 
with melancholia. She has had a terrible 
experience. She is a Philadelphia woman. 
Her husband was a manufacturer of win- 
dow glass. He died about five years ago 
from typhoid fever and left her with a small 
52 



THE SECRET LIFE 

fortune and two daughters; one fourteen 
years old, one seventeen — nice, rosy, whole- 
some, well brought up girls. They had 
always wanted to travel, but during her 
husband's Hfetime he was too busy and she 
would never leave him. About a year 
after his death, they concluded, as the 
lease of their house had run out, to store 
their furniture and go abroad for a time, 
with the idea that the girls could perfect 
themselves in languages and music and 
see something of the world. 

I don't want you to think there was 
anything sensational about them. They 
were just quiet, middle-class Philadelphians, 
— you know the type, — modest, conven- 
tional, devoted to the proprieties. That's 
what makes their story all the more tragic. 
They arrived in London; took quiet 
lodgings in Dover Street, and concluded 
to spend six months in England, seeing 
the sights, and making these London lodg- 
ings their headquarters. They had been 
there all through the month of May, doing 
picture galleries, churches, and the muse- 
ums, and occasionally a theatre. One 
Saturday they had tickets for a concert, 
53 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and as the place was near and the day 
was fine, they decided to walk to the place 
where the concert was to be given, stopping 
at a shop in Regent street on the way to 
give an order about something being made 
there. I don't know what it was, or where 
the shop was situated, but at all events 
the three were walking abreast, the girls 
chattering and joking about the order. 
The sidewalk was very crowded, so that 
the mother stepped ahead, but heard her 
daughters' voices at her elbow for several 
minutes. 

The street grew clearer as she went, and 
she turned to beckon the girls alongside 
again. She didn't see them, and stood 
a few moments for them to catch up. After 
waiting awhile she walked back and still 
missed them. It occurred to her that 
they might have passed ahead without 
her noticing it, and gone on to the shop 
where they had planned to stop, so she 
went there and waited twenty minutes. 
Then she imagined they might have missed 
their way, and gone to the concert hall to 
wait for her. By this time she felt sufficient 
anxiety to hail a cab, but no one had seen 
54 



THE SECRET LIFE 

them at the concert hall, and she herself 
had all three of the tickets, so she returned 
to their lodgings, sure that they would 
turn up there eventually in any case. 

At six o'clock they were still absent, and 
really frightened by this time she visited 
all the near-by poHce stations, but could 
get no news of them. 

That was four years ago, and from that 
day to this she has never seen or heard of 
them. She has travelled all over Europe 
and returned twice to America, has ad- 
vertised in every possible way, and has 
employed the best detectives of both con- 
tinents. Now she has come back for the 
third time, utterly broken in health and 
fortune. Their home in Philadelphia has 
become a boarding-house, and she has 
taken a room and will spend the rest of 
her life there, hoping that in that way, if 
they ever return, they may be able to reach 
her. Nearly all her money has gone in 
the search, and her mind is almost equally 
a wreck. She goes over to Philadelphia 
this afternoon, and I went in the morning 
to tell her good-by." 

Mary said — her lips were white — " But, 

55 



THE SECRET LIFE 

good heavens, Emily! where could the 
girls have gone ? " 

"That's the terrible part of it," Mrs. 

M answered. **One can't imagine. 

They were both so young. It was in a 
foreign country: they had no money. As 
far as the mother knew, neither had, nor 
could have had, any reason for going, nor 
anyone a reason for taking them. If one 
only had gone one might suspect a lover, 
or a sudden aberration of mind, but there 
were two; it was in broad daylight. Three 
minutes before they had been beside her. 
There was no struggle, no accident. No 
one could have silently carried off or made 
way with two grown girls in Regent Street 
in midday. One minute they were there, 
laughing, happy, and commonplace, and 
the next minute they had vanished utterly 
and forever, without a word or a cry. 

"But why has one never heard of it?" 
I said. 

"Well, of course, the mother kept it out 
of the papers. For a long time she feared 
they might have been the victims of the 
sort of person who preys on young girls, 
and dreaded that there should be a scandal 
S6 



THE SECRET LIFE 

by which their lives should be ruined if 
they ever returned. To-day I think she 
would be glad to find them even in the 
lowest brothel, if she might only see them 
again." 

"Hadn't any of the police or detectives 
a theory ? " 

"Oh, thousands at first, but they never 
bore any fruit. Consider all the circum- 
stances. They were sensible, self-reliant 
American girls. By this time, if they were 
alive, they would have found some means 
of communicating with their mother. She 
has pubUshed guarded appeals, which they 
would understand, and always in the Eng- 
lish language, in about every paper in this 
country and Europe." 

"But what do you think.?" 

"What can one think? Can you con- 
ceive of any solution when you consider 
all the facts?" 

"Has the mother no theory?" 

"Well, she has, but then she is hardly 
sensible, you know, after the strain of such 
an experience. YouVe heard of the Fourth 
Dimension, haven't you ? She says if that's 
not the explanation, she cannot imagine 

57 



THE SECRET LIFE 

any other. She doesn't really believe it, 
I think, but she says if they did not stumble 
into it, where are they ? And what answer 
can one give her?" 

By this time it was late, and I came 
away. Outside the sun was shining and 
the trolley cars buzzing by. The theory 
of the Fourth Dimension seemed absurd, 
but I wondered where those poor young 
girls could have gone, and felt an oppres- 
sion in my breathing. 

January 23. 

Who, I wonder, was the stupid phrase- 
maker guilty of saying that Genius was 
The Ant ^^^Y ^^ infinite capacity for tak- 
and the Ing paius ? And yet Shakespeare, 
" ' according to tradition, never blot- 
ted a Hne. How much pains had the little • 
Mozart taken when he began his first con- 
cert tour? Creation comes swiftly and 
with heat. The man who must take infi- 
nite pains in production is never a genius. 
Indeed, when one sees how little the crea- 
tion of beauty, harmony, or ideas is related 
to their human creator, how little, in a way, 
he seems related to them, one is almost 

58 



THE SECRET LIFE 

inclined to imagine that somewhere there 
exists a great reservoir of force and that 
the "genius" is merely a cock through 
which the creative fluid runs. He happens 
to be the cock that is ** turned on" while 
the handles of the others are left untouched. 



There was once a very ambitious and 
industrious Ant. Its home was in a field 
where the grass and flowers bloomed. 

This Ant had convictions as to the best 
uses of life, and wasted no time. So many 
hours a day she devoted to the improve- 
ment of her mind, and so many to her life 
labour, which was to build an ant-hill. 
Early and late she toiled, and as she toiled 
she thought very deeply, elaborating numer- 
ous excellent and noble theories. All her 
theories concerned the best use of oppor- 
tunities, and the doing of some work which 
should make the world better because she 
had existed. 

Once in a long while, when quite worn 

out by her labours, she would climb to the 

top of a blade of grass, and look out into 

the world. Sometimes the sun was just 

59 



THE SECRET LIFE 

rising and the field was damascened with 
the blue and white cups of morning-glories, 
and sometimes it was evening and the moon 
silvered the dew-hung grass, which palpi- 
tated with fireflies. At such times a di- 
vine yearning and great longing filled the 
heart of the tired little emmet, and she 
would hurry down to her work at once, 
saying bravely to herself: 

"If I waste a moment my hill will never 
be high enough to look out upon this beau- 
tiful world." And so would toil on with- 
out ceasing, taking the greatest pains with 
every grain of sand, fitting and refitting it 
into its place with infinite pains, and com- 
forting herself for her slow progress by 
saying: 

**I am really not very old yet. I still 
have a great many days in which to com- 
plete my work." And would make some 
excuse to herself for going down to stand 
on the ground beside it and gain encour- 
agement by noting how much greater was 
the hill than her own stature, and then 
went happily back to her task. 

Near the Ant's hill a lark had built 
its home — a careless body, who roughly 
60 



THE SECRET LIFE 

kicked out the earth for a nest, and who, 
being dull as she sat on her eggs, con- 
versed at times with the Ant, for whom the 
matron manifested an ill-concealed con- 
tempt. 

"In heaven's name!" she said, "What 
is the use of wearing yourself to skin and 
bone working on that hill ? Isn't it quite 
big enough for your uses already ? " 

"Yes," replied the Ant, patiently, "but 
it is every one's duty to make the world 
as beautiful as they can, and I want to 
build the biggest and most beautiful ant- 
hill in the world. And oh!" — she cried, 
clasping her little paws and with a hungry 
look in her eyes — "I do so want to be 
famous!" 

"Fiddle-de-dee!" answered the brown 
bird, contemptuously. "Famous! — what 
is that ? Are you wearing yourself out 
for such nonsense ? As for me, give me a 
fat worm for breakfast and luck with my 
eggs, and it's all I ask." Saying which, 
she tucked her head under her wing and 
went to sleep, while the Ant hurried away 
to finish the daily task she set herself. 

In course of time a young lark was 
6i 



THE SECRET LIFE 

hatched. A great red, sprawHng, feather- 
less thing, with a big bill and no idea but 
worms. The Ant used to try sometimes, 
when his mother was absent hunting food, 
to teach the ugly young thing some of her 
own excellent theories, but the bird only 
blinked sleepily and scornfully and never 
answered a word, so the Ant was reluctantly 
obliged to give up the hope of ever inspir- 
ing him with the nobler ambitions of life. 

She was growing much encouraged about 
her own work. All the other ants in the 
field wondered at and admired it, and as 
one could nearly see out above the grasses 
by standing upon her hill on tiptoe, the 
happy insect began to dream of immortality. 

By this time, too, the young lark had 
grown feathers, and one morning he 
stumbled out of the nest, fluttered a mo- 
ment to try his wings, and suddenly, burst- 
ing into a flood of song, soared upward into 
the sunlit blue. 

The Ant fell to the earth, breathless and 
paralyzed, but in a moment, stifling her 
pain and despair, she rose up and began, 
from mere habit, fitting more grains of 
sand into her unfinished hill. 
62 



THE SECRET LIFE 

A Poet walked in the field that day, 
meditating some verses upon the divine 
gift of genius. He cried aloud with joy at 
the lark's song, and while he gazed upward 
stumbled over the Ant's hill and demol- 
ished it, but in his note-book he wrote : 

**Oh, miracle of Genius, that lifts the 
Sons of God on golden pinions to the gates 
of heaven, while the dull myriads toil 
futilely at Babels below." 

January 29. 

I suppose that everyone who has reached 
maturity has been aware of a sense of a 
dual personality — of a something xhe 
within him that is a me and a not Doppei- 
me; of opposing influences that ganger, 
puzzle his judgment, weaken his resolves, 
and warp his intention. These natures he 
finds engaged in an eternal conflict which 
sways him from the course he would in- 
stinctively follow, and draws him along 
lines of thought and conduct satisfying to 
neither side of his being, and achieving 
only a helpless compromise between the 
two. 

"To be?" — "Or not to be?" contend 
63 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the two at every crossing of the tangled 
meshes of existence, and neither disputant 
is ever convinced by the other's logic. 

"To sleep" — says one. "Perchance to 
dream," replies the other coldly; and so 
gives pause to Hamlet's swift intentions. 

Which is the real man ? The Hamlet 
whose soul lusts for sudden brute revenge, 
whose promptings are the instinctive play 
of the natural man, or that frigid censor 
who checks the impulses of the first speaker 
and chills him with cold reasons and bal- 
ancings of right and wrong, so that the 
sword falls from his nerveless hand at the 
very moment of opportunity? Or after 
all, is the real man the one whose actions 
are a continual endeavour to steer between 
the two promptings; the Hamlet whose 
doings are not in direct answer to either 
voice — are but furious and confused out- 
bursts of indecision .? 

If it were at all possible to decide between 
the two, one would incHne to think that 
the second voice, that chiUing critic, was 
another self, ahen to us, though en- 
trenched in the very depths of the soul — 
was the not me, in everlasting opposition 
64 



THE SECRET LIFE 

to the me — was the past warring with the 
present. 

The warm, impulsive, blundering me we 
know, but who is that other? Whence 
comes this double, this alter ego, this 
bosom's lord, and strange, nameless ghost 
who haunts the house of life ? How many 
thousand deaths have we died to give him 
life ? For he is inexpressibly aged, infi- 
nitely sophisticated; and while the me still 
crowns its locks with youth's golden illu- 
sions, he is grey with knowledge and hoary 
with disenchantment. Though a part of 
our most intimate selves, he is not at one 
with us. He sympathizes with none of our 
enthusiasms, is tempted by none of our 
sins. . . . Sins! . . . what should he do 
eating forbidden fruit who is all compounded 
of the knowledge of good and evil ? 

"Ye shall be as gods, having eaten of 
that tree " — and like a god he sits in the 
dusk of the soul's seat, knowing the past, 
predicating the future, calmly beholding 
the fulfilling of our destiny. And yet is 
his grim wisdom of no avail, since — a 
shadov^ Cassandra — he warns in vain. 
His deity-ship is of no more worth than that 
6s 



THE SECRET LIFE 

of the Olympian heavens, which might 
punish or reward, but could not divert 
the decrees of a power higher than itself. 
It is indeed the fate of all gods to have their 
creations caught from between their shap- 
ing hands by the blind, fumbling fingers 
with the shears. Gods may teach; may 
command; may ban or bless, but the being 
once made is Fate's creature, not theirs. 

This cynical, impotent dbppelganger goes 
by many names. His Christian cognomen 
is Conscience, and his voice is raised to 
exalt Christian tenets of clean living and 
high thinking. 

"Thou shalt surely die," he declaims from 
the altar where he wears with cheerful in- 
difference the livery of a faith in which he 
has no part, and we walk contentedly in the 
path he designates, flattering ourselves upon 
being upheld and guided by the voice of 
omnipotent truth, until passion trips our 
heels with some hidden snare, and, rolling 
headlong in the mire, we Hft our stained 
faces in astonishment to behold that calm- 
lidded countenance all unstirred by our 
wild mishap. He foresaw, but he was 
helpless to prevent, nor does he greatly 
66 



THE SECRET LIFE 

care, since he also knows that age after 
age every reincarnation of the spirit must 
be tempted anew by the ever-renewed, ever- 
lustful, unalterable flesh. 

Weissman diverts himself and indulges 
the Teutonic weakness for word-building 
by naming this double self the "germ- 
plasm" — that immortal, eternal seed of 
life that links the generations in an un- 
broken chain; changing and developing 
only through the unreckonable processes 
of time, and taking heed not at all of the 
mere passing accidents of fleeting avatars. 

Why should not this germ-plasm, this 
eternal ghost, be infinitely sophisticated ? 
What surprises can its mere momentary 
envelope contrive for a consciousness as 
old as the moon ? If temptations seduce 
the young flesh, though the old, old soul 
declares with scorn that teeth are set on 
edge by the eating of sour grapes, it is not 
surprised at all when the body persists in 
its will to seize upon the fruit of its desire, 
having seen in everyone of a myriad gen- 
erations the same obstinacy and weakness 
of the flesh, which learns little and very 
hardly from the spirit. 

67 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Now and again — in his moments of 
exalted seriousness — man listens to this 
ancient voice of the spirit breathing the 
accumulated experience of time, and then 
it imposes upon him the ripened wisdom 
of its long retrospect of the generations, 
and man creates religions — by which he 
does not square his conduct — or philoso- 
phies — whose bit he immediately takes 
between his teeth. But for the most part 
he stops his ears to the soul's stern, sad 
preaching with the thick wax of sentiment- 
alism, and that undying determination that 
Ufe shall be not what it is, but what he 
wishes it to be — and so stumbles along, 
through ever-renewed pangs and tragedies, 
after a mirage in the hard desert of exist- 
ence, to whose stones and flints, despite 
his bruises, he will not turn his eyes. And 
well it is for us that upon many the mantle 
of flesh lies so warm and thick that this 
ghost called consciousness of self cannot 
chill their blood with his dank wisdom 
breathed from out a world of graves. In 
the hearts of such as these all the sweet 
illusions of existence came to full and 
natural bloom. To their lusty egoism Ufe 
68 



THE SECRET LIFE 

has all the exhilaration and freshness of 
a new and special creation. 

Far otherwise is it with the haunted 
man, whose dwelling is blighted by that 
cold presence with its terrible memory. 
Forever echoes through his chambers the 
cry that hope will be unfulfilled, that love 
will die, the morning fade, that what has 
been will be again and forever again; 
that the waters of life will climb the shore 
only to crawl back again into the blind 
deeps of eternity; that the unit is forever 
lost in the eternal ebb and flux of matter. 
Endeavour can find no footing in this pro- 
fundity of experience. To all desire, all 
aspiration, the ghost says in a paralyzing 
whisper: 

"Scipio, remember that thou art a man 
— that everything has been done even if 
thou doest it not — that everything will 
be done whether thou doest it or no. . . . 
Where are the poems that were written in 
Baalbec ? Where the pictures that were 
painted in Tadmor of the Wilderness? 
Are there fewer pictures and poems to-day 
because the men who made them are not ? 
Who was prime minister to the bearded 

69 



THE SECRET LIFE 

King of Babylon ? Where is his fame ? 
. . . Ay, drink this cup if you will, but you 
know well the taste of it is not good at the 
bottom. You have drunk it a thousand 
thousand of times, and the taste was never 
good, and yet you will drink it a thousand 
times again, hoping always that it will be 
good." . . . 

And the haunted man sits with idle 
hands and withered purpose, listening al- 
ways to the voice, while his neighbours 
push loudly on to die futilely but gloriously 
in the unending battle. 

"An end -of- the -century disease," say 
these full-fed, happy egotists with lowered 
breath and eyes askance as they pass the 
haunted house. **The mould of age has 
fallen upon him and made him mad." 
Yet before the walls of Troy these two — 
the ghost-ridden, and the happy egotist — 
battled for the glowing shadow of a woman 
whom neither man loved nor desired. 
Achilles, blackly melancholy in his tent, 
heard the old voice cry 

**€v oe Lj) TLfiy rjjiev KaKos rjoe Kai €0"c/Aos 

and disdains the greatness of Hfe and the 

70 



THE SECRET LIFE 

littleness of it. To an iron inevitableness 
of fate he opposes only indifference and 
an unbending courage. That which has 
been will be, and the end is death and dark- 
ness. He has no illusions. He wars neither 
for love of country nor love of Helen. 
If Troy falls nothing is gained. If the 
Greeks fail nothing will be lost. In time 
all the sweat and blood shed upon Ilium's 
windy plain will evaporate into a mere mist 
of uncredited legend. In Achilles, the other 
self, the alter ego, is the stronger man. The 
ghost of dead experience is as living as he. 
Not so is it with Hector. All the passions 
of humanity are as new and fresh to him 
as if none before himself had known them. 
He looks neither forward nor back. The 
present is his concern. What though men 
have died and been forgotten, he will not 
lessen his utmost effort, even to the giving 
up of his life to save Troy. That is to 
him the one thing of importance. So 
robust is his courage, his faith, his love, 
that the sad spirit of memory within him 
cannot speak loud enough to make him 
hear. There is no warring of dual per- 
sonalities in him; he is aware of but one — 
71 



THE SECRET LIFE 

that rich momentary incarnation called 
Hector, more potent than the memories 
and experiences of the thousands of lives 
that preceded him, that gave him existence. 

What though Achilles was right; what 
though both be but dust and legend now — 
who would not choose that flash of being 
called Hector — Hector dragged at the 
chariot-heel of Achilles — Hector with wife 
enslaved and children slaughtered and his 
city's proud towers levelled with the plain, 
rather than to have been the haunted 
victor, triumphing but not triumphant; 
fighting without purpose or hope ? The 
same end indeed came to both, but one 
died as he lived, for what he thought a glori- 
ous end, while the other too passed away — 
but with the cold knowledge that both 
deaths were fruitless and vain. 

Troy is a dream, but the battle forever 
is waged between the fresh incarnation of 
being and the memories of past being. 
Every creature wakes out of childhood 
aware that he lives not alone in even the 
secretest chambers of his life. Which is 
the / he cannot always say. The two 
companions are never at one. Sometimes 
72 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the struggle breaks into open flame. Some- 
times the one is victor, sometimes the van- 
quished. Each fights for Helen, for his 
ideal of pleasure, of wisdom, or of good, 
but in the very handgrips of battle a chilling 
doubt will fall between them whether she 
for whom they war — call her virtue, beauty, 
lust, life, what you will — is the real Queen, 
or only some misleading eidolon whose true 
self is hid in distant Sparta; and so the 
grasp relaxes, the tense breath falls free, 
the selves mingle. Man gropes for truth 
and finds it vague, intangible, not to be 
grasped — a dream. 

February 17. 

What is that ineffable quality in the air 
that says Spring f' 

Long ago, as far back as towards the 
end of January, there came sud- ««AYoxing 
denly one day a sense that the Man's 
winter was conquered. There has ^^^' 
been much cold weather since — we shall 
have much cold still, but there is always a 
promise in the air. 

There is a sad day later in the year when 
one is aware all at once that summer is 

73 



THE SECRET LIFE 

ending, and the warm, mild weeks that 
follow never console for that hour's realiza- 
tion that the apex is crossed and the rest 
of the path slopes downward. Just such 
a day comes in one's Hfe, — while one is 
still young and strong — a sudden sense 
that youth is done; the climacteric of passion 
passed. Life has a long Indian summer 
still, but it's never again the real thing, — 
that ripening toward fruition; that ecstasy 
of expansion and growth. There is no 
visible change for a while, yet every day 
there is an imperceptible fall in the tem- 
perature. Always the nights are growing 
longer. The flowers drop away one by 
one — the sap sinks a Httle, leaving the 
extreme delicate twigs moribund. No one 
has seen the leaves fall, yet there are fewer 
upon the bough — winter is coming. 

Age is peaceful, perhaps — but middle 
age — ! The wave clings to the shore, 
but the inexorable ebb draws it down relent- 
lessly into the deep. This is the time that 
men go musthy like old elephants. This 
is the period when both men and women 
do their mad deeds, which belie all their 
previous records. It is their one last fran- 
74 



THE SECRET LIFE 

tic clutch after vanishing romance and 
passion. Men buy a semblance of it from 
young women sometimes, and resolutely 
endeavour to persuade themselves that it 
is the real thing — that gold can renew 
youth, can purchase a second summer — but 
they know well that it is only a mechanical 
imitation. Those cruel old satirists, the 
comedy writers, loved to paint the trembling 
dotard resolutely shutting his eyes to the 
lusty young rival hiding behind the jade's 
petticoats. 

As for the women ! — who shall tell the 
real story of the middle age of women .? — 
of the confident coquette, who one day 
turns away to punish her slave, and finds, 
when she relents, that his eyes are fixed 
upon her daughter ? — of the bewildered 
inspection of the mirror, that still tells a 
fluttering tale of curves and colours, though 
startled experience shows the eyes of men 
turning in preference to crude, red-elbowed 
girls, obviously her inferior in grace and 
charm ? — of the shock of finding that 
the world is no longer much interested in 
her — the amazement of the discovery that 
the handsome lads see little difference be- 

75 



THE SECRET LIFE 

tween a woman of thirty-five and one of 
fifty ? — of the shame - faced misery of 
learning that the passion, which she has 
virtuously resolved to repulse, is given in 
reaHty to her niece ? Her charm, her 
sweetness, her well-preserved beauty is as 
nothing beside mere raw youth. Unde- 
veloped figures, flat chests, blotchy com- 
plexions, are of more value than her 
rounded mellow loveliness. She is pushed 
from her throne by giggling girls, who 
stare at her in hard contempt and wonder 
openly what the old creature does linger- 
ing belated in this galley. 

Though she be called *'a fine woman" 
still, men of all ages will turn from her to 
dote upon an empty-headed debutante. 
Her comprehension and sympathy, her wit 
and her learning are less enthralling than 
the vapid babblings of red-cheeked misses 
just out of pinafores. Her heart is as 
young as ever; she knows herself capable 
of a finer, nobler passion and tenderness 
than the girl can dream of, yet the selfish, 
egotistic emotions of the self-confident chit 
awake a rapture that would be dulled by 
the richest warmth she could give. 

76 



THE SECRET LIFE 

"Age, I do abhor thee: 
Youth, I do adore thee; 
O, my love, my love is young! " 

That she in her turn elbowed the preced- 
ing generation from its place comforts her 
not at all. Oh, for again one hour only of 
the splendid domination of youth — one 
rich instant of the power to intoxicate ! . . . 

There is nothing for it but to keep such 
things to one's self, and jog on quietly and 
respectably to the end. One has had one's 
turn. 



That mad girl Spring has passed up this way 

With a hole in her pockets. 
For here lies her money all strewn in the grass — 

Broad dandelion ducats. 

She'll be needing this wealth ere the end of the year 

For a warm winter gown, 
Though now she's content with a breast-knot of buds 

And a violet crown. 

She heard in the green blooming depths of the wood 

The voice of a dove. 
And she dropped all these flowering coins as she ran 

To meet summer and love. 

'Twill not serve you to gather from out her wild path 

All your two hands can hold — 
Only youth and the Spring may buy kisses and mirth 

With this frail fairy gold. 

n 



THE SECRET LIFE 

February i8. 

There has been great recrudescence of 
the Essay of late — none of it very impor- 
^^ tant, I take the Hberty of think- 

Arabian ing. We moderns have lost the 
Looking- ^^[^\^ of it All Qf us, at least, but 

Stevenson, and he hardly seems a 
modern, so closely is he related to the great 
classics, with his inheritance of the Grand 
Style, like the bel canto, now a lost art. And 
yet the Essay is a great temptation. Doubt- 
less not one of all those who go down into 
the ink-bottle with pens has quite escaped 
its seduction. Generally it is, I suspect, 
merely an outcropping of the somewhat 
too widely known need of the artistic 
nature for "self-expression" in more defi- 
nite terms than ordinary work permits. 

The young fellows, still walking in the 
light of the eternal pulchritudes, are touch- 
ingly anxious lest they "falsify themselves" 
— pathetically unaware of the supreme 
unconcern of the rest of humanity as to 
their personal veracity. The line between 
art and the other thing is drawn just across 
this zone of egotism. "The other thing*' 

78 



THE SECRET LIFE 

is a man's expression of himself; Art is the 
mirror in which each observer sees only 
his own face. The Arabian legend of the 
prosperous old beggar who, making a pil- 
grimage to Mecca, left to his son, as his 
sole means of support, a looking-glass, and 
returned to find the boy starving and gazing 
into the mirror himself, is supposed to 
cynically suggest the uses of judicious 
flattery, but has deeper application. Speak 
of yourself — the world yawns. Talk to 
it of itself — rudely, vaguely, profoundly, 
how you will — and it hangs upon your 
lips. Turn the mirror toward it and it 
says proudly, ** Of just such exalted devotion 
and sacrifice am I capable," or mutters 
with a shudder, "There, but for the grace 
of God, goes Augustine." 

The tenor sings '^Sous ta Fenetre" and 
every face is lighted by the inner shining 
of romance. The strangest revelations are 
discerned upon the countenances of respect- 
able matrons, of range men of affairs. 
They beat their hands together in a flood- 
ing wave of applause, and the greasy 
Italian in his uneasy evening dress swells 
with a strutting consciousness of his vocal 

79 



THE SECRET LIFE 

chords, of his method, his upper C, of his 
own value. 

O temporal O mores! He is nothing 
whatever to them. It is only that in every 
human heart there is a chord that vibrates 
to C in alt. They are quite unaware of 
him, and of his greasy personality. Every 
man is singing with his own soul's voice 
under the lattice of his first beloved. Every 
woman is leaning to listen to a dream lover 
yearning up to her through the warm 
scented moonlight. As for the garlicky 
loves of the singer they care not one jot 
whether he loves or not. It is all a ques- 
tion of themselves, of a vibration. 

March 4. 

The Cry I h2ive been clearing out a lot of 

of the old books, preparatory to moving, 
°™^°' and have been amused to see how 
empty and dead many already are, which a 
few years since were raging through edition 
after edition, and were the subject of so much 
talk and interest. Already more than half 
have grown as desiccated and unimportant 
as last year's leaves, and their "timeliness'* 
seems of a time as far past as the deluge. 
80 



THE SECRET LIFE 

There was among these dead books a group 
on the Woman Question, which already, 
in so short a space, has lost all its interroga- 
tion point. Is it that there was really no 
Woman Question, or has the Question 
already received an answer ? 

Usually one is inclined to think that when 
a book voices with truth and passion the 
needs and thoughts of even a portion of 
humanity, it has a real claim to be classed 
as literature, though it fails of the immor- 
tahty which is the meed only of such writings 
as express with beautiful verity the im- 
mortal, unchanging needs of Ufe. But 
already one regards with amused indiffer- 
ence yesterday's crop of novels written by 
women, with their vague ecstasies of long- 
ing, their confused cries of discontent, 
their indistinct moans and reproaches, 
though such a very short time since those 
books faithfully expressed the mental state 
of the sex, as one could not doubt, seeing 
the greediness with which editions were 
called for of *'The Heavenly Twins," 
"Keynotes," "A Superfluous Woman," and 
their Hke, or listening to the echoes awaked 
by their inchoate sentiments in the feminine 
8i 



THE SECRET LIFE 

mind. Yet the sum of the protest of all 
these books by women was like the cry of 
an infant — suffering but inarticulate. 

I suppose the truth is that even so 
short a time since free thought and free 
speech were still so new to women that, 
struggling in the swaddling bands of igno- 
rance and convention, it was small wonder 
that she could not state with precision, or 
even define clearly to herself, where her 
pain lay, nor how she would allay it. She 
knew she was in revolt against what had 
been. She could not yet choose what she 
would change in the future. Some of them 
cried out for larger political rights, others 
were convinced that the abolition of stays 
and the introduction of trousers was all 
that was needed to produce a feminine 
millennium. 

"Latch-keys!" cried the browbeaten 
EngHsh girls — "and freedom to be out 
after dark like our own brothers. Look 
at the men. They are quite happy. It 
must be the possession of latch-keys that 
makes them so: give them also to us." 

"No," roundly declared a certain Mona 
Caird, "what we really need is a latch-key 
82 



THE SECRET LIFE 

to let us out of the lifelong oppressive bond 
of marriage. It weighs too heavily upon 
us — let us go free ! " 

"Nonsense!" contradicted Sarah Grand. 
"Marriage is all right. What is wrong is 
man. He comes to the marriage altar with 
stained and empty hands, while he demands 
that ours be spotless, and heaped with 
youth, health, innocence, and faith. He 
swindles us. Reform man if you would 
make us happy!" 

" Higher education " — " Equal wages " 
— "Physical development" — "No house- 
hold drudgery" — "Expansion of the ego," 
cried the conflicting voices; each with a 
quack panacea for the disease of discon- 
tent. 

Can it be that all this was but ten years 
ago? How quickly ideas are changing! 

I think that this noise among the women 
was the last wave of the democratic ideal 
expending itself. It was their restlessness 
under a sense of their inferiority to man. 
Until the nineteenth century, woman had 
been content to accept the male of her kind, 
with his mental and physical endowments, 
as the true standard of human excellence, 

83 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and to humbly admit that she permanently 
failed to reach that standard. 

The universality of the democratic ideal 
aroused in her at last an unwillingness to 
admit her innate inferiority, and drove her 
to a desperate search for some fountain 
of Salmacis that should transmute her to 
an exact likeness of her long-time lord 
and superior. The search, of course, was 
delayed and confused by that furious and 
debasing fin de Steele demand for happiness 
at all cost. She heard no talk an5rwhere 
of courage, submission, or duty. The later 
decades of the democratic century had 
refused to contemplate the world-old riddle 
of the blind Fates who create one vessel 
to honour and another to dishonour. So 
woman, no more than her fellows, would 
consider the caprices of destiny which from 
the union of one man and one woman will 
produce an heir to beauty, talent, and suc- 
cess, and from the same union — without 
volition or intention upon anyone's part — 
brings forth a cripple, an idiot, or the help- 
less Inadequate, who is foredoomed to 
failure with a grim gravitation no human 
laws or institutions can arrest. The nine- 
84 



THE SECRET LIFE 

teenth century was a sentimental one; un- 
willing to consider unpleasant truths. **A11 
men are born equal, " it stubbornly persisted 
in asserting, and then was rather shocked 
when some of its offspring sought this 
equality of happiness at the sword's point 
or the bomb's fuse — as if content was a 
coin to be stolen and concealed about the 
person of the thief. 

Of course, the women finally became 
infected with the bacillus of unsound ideas, 
and struggling against the immutable bur- 
den of sex ran to and fro, crying "Lo, 
here!" and **Lo, there!" and wailing, 
"Where is my happiness? Who has my 
happiness ? You men have stolen and are 
keeping it from me!" 

A certain part of the charge was true, 
too. Men had filched from her. 

The theft was not a new one. If the 
statute of limitations could ever run in 
crimes against nature it might have almost 
ceased to be a wrong in this case, after the 
lapse of nearly two thousand years. 

Morgan in his "Ancient Society," deal- 
ing with the question of Mutter-Recht, 
declares that throughout the earliest period 

8s 



THE SECRET LIFE 

of human existence regarding which any 
knowledge is attainable, descent and all 
rights of succession were traced through 
the women of the gens or clans, into which 
primitive man was organized. Women, 
as being the bearers and protectors of the 
young, were regarded as the natural land 
owners, and therefore did not leave their 
homes to follow the fathers of their chil- 
dren, lest they should lose their own 
possessions and rights of inheritance. In- 
stead, the men married into the sept of 
their wives. The power and independence 
of women was lost at last through the 
practice of making female captives in war. 
These had no land and were the property 
of, and dependent upon the will of, their 
male captor. In course of time men natu- 
rally grew to prefer these subservient wives. 
The Arab advises his son: "It is better to 
have a wife with no claims of kin and no 
brethren near to take her part." 

Women therefore began to dread cap- 
ture as the greatest of evils. After the 
movements of vast hordes began — the 
marches of the race columns across the 
continents — with their wars of spoliation 
86 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and conquest, there was no security save 
in physical strength, and the females yielded 
all claims to the men in return for protec- 
tion. It was better, they thought, to be a 
slave at home than a slave among strangers. 
Still the man, while asserting physical su- 
periority, claimed none morally. Under 
the pagan rule of Rome, the jurisconsults, 
by their theory of ** Natural Law," evi- 
dently assumed the equality of the sexes 
as a principle of their code of equity. Sir 
Henry Maine says there came a time "when 
the situation of the female, married or 
unmarried, became one of great personal 
and proprietary independence ; for the tend- 
ency of the later law . . . was to reduce 
the power of the guardian to a nullity, 
while the form of marriage conferred on 
the husband no compensating superiority.'* 
Among the Germanic races of the Roman 
period, a woman was occasionally ruler 
of the tribe, and the blue-eyed wife of the 
roving Barbarian, as well as the proud 
Roman matron, were held alike in high 
esteem for their functions as wife and 
mother. The priestess crowned with oak 
leaves, officiating at the sylvan altars of the 

87 



THE SECRET LIFE 

forest, or the Vestal Virgin serving the 
fires of the white temples of Rome, were 
alike held worthy of speaking face to face 
with the gods and of conveying their bless- 
ings to man. It was the humble religion 
of Judea — which women embraced with 
ardour, and to which they were early and 
willing martyrs — that cursed them with 
a deadly curse. It denied woman not only 
mental and physical, but moral equality 
with man, and besmirched the very foun- 
tain and purpose of her being with a shame- 
ful stain. It made her presence in the 
most holy places a desecration, and for 
the first time regarded her feminine func- 
tions as a disgrace rather than a glory. 
And this although the founder of the Chris- 
tian faith had set an example of reverence 
and tenderness for the sex in his own hfe, 
and had left his mother to be raised to a 
heavenly throne by his worshippers. Never 
from his lips had fallen a word that could 
give warrant for the insult ofi^ered woman 
by his church. He was the first of all men 
living to denounce the injustice of visiting 
upon the woman the whole penalty of a 
double sin, and his life was beautified with 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the tenderest friendships with women. But 
already, before a church had been fairly 
organized, Paul was dictating silence to 
women, covered heads and supreme sub- 
mission to the male, and was declaring 
against marriage as a weakness. If a 
man must marry because of his weakness, 
he might do so, but not to marry was 
better. 

Scorn of woman and her functions 
grew. Antagonism to marriage intensified. 
Woman by the very law of her existence 
was a curse and a temptation to sin. Hear 
Tertullian — one of the fathers of the 
Church — on this subject: 

"Do you not know that each one of you 
is an Eve ? The sentence of God on this 
sex of yours lives in this age; the guilt must 
of necessity Hve too. You are the devil's 
gateway; you are the unsealer of the for- 
bidden tree; you are the first deserter of 
the divine law; you are she who persuaded 
him who the devil was not valiant enough 
to attack. You destroyed so easily God's 
image, man. On account of your desert — 
that is death — the Son of God had to die!" 

This is but one of a thousand similar 
89 



THE SECRET LIFE 

insults by the early writers of the Church 
— all Patristic books bristle with them. 

Lecky, comparing the Roman juris- 
prudence with the canon or ecclesiastical 
law, remarks that "the Pagan laws dur- 
ing the earlier centuries of the Empire 
were constantly repealing the disabilities of 
women, whereas it was the aim of the 
canon law to substitute enactments which 
should impose upon the female sex the 
most offensive personal restrictions and 
stringent subordination." 

Even marriage and the production of 
offspring — which in the pagan world had 
been an honour to both sexes — was stig- 
matized. No priest of God might ap- 
proach a woman, scarcely even look at her, 
and no woman was allowed to serve at 
God's altar. Celibacy was a virtue so 
great in man that none set apart for the 
highest duties might marry, and woman 
was encouraged to suppress in herself all 
the sweet and wholesome instincts for 
motherhood — an instinct upon which the 
race hung dependent, one for which she 
willingly suffered the sharp pangs of child- 
birth — and instead to immure herself in 
90 



THE SECRET LIFE 

convents and endeavour to find solace in 
the spiritual ecstasies of morbid meditation. 

Now was woman at last robbed and poor 
indeed! Her social and civil equality hav- 
ing been yielded in exchange for protec- 
tion, her protectors had bereft her of all 
moral rights, and denounced as unclean 
the function for the perfect performance 
of which she had paid out all her goods. 
It was the triumph of the Oriental idea 
over the ideals of the Occident, and so 
deeply did the Eastern thought stamp itself 
upon the Western mind that only to-day 
the latter begins to free itself from the yoke 
of the Asian Paul's fierce egotism of sex. 
So deeply indeed did this thought pene- 
trate, that historians do not hesitate to 
attribute to this scorn of woman and her 
mission of childbearing a long delay in the 
development of European civilization. The 
higher spiritual natures, being more under 
the influence of the Church, accepted its 
suggestions of asceticism and left the baser 
sort to perpetuate the race and thus delayed 
the processes of evolution. 

It was the denial by the Church of the 
beauty and nobility of natural love that 
91 



THE SECRET LIFE 

drove the Middle Ages to the invention of 
chivahy and the romantic love of the un- 
wedded, that they might evade the ban 
and find some outlet for the emotions. 

With the Reformation, that first upris- 
ing of the Western mind against Asian 
domination, men threw off the yoke in so 
far as it bound their own necks, and de- 
clared the rightness and reasonableness 
of all their mental and physical functions. 
It was no longer a shame for the priest 
of God to mate with a woman, nor a 
weakness for a man to round his life with 
the fulness of joy to be found in connubial 
love, when he at the same time assumed 
its duties and responsibilities. The in- 
grained contempt of women was not so 
easily eradicated. Honour the man defined 
for himself as integrity, wholeness, a develop- 
ment of every power to its highest possi- 
bility. Honour for woman was simply 
chastity. That is to say, if she repressed 
all the animal side of life she might entirely 
neglect the spiritual. She might be but 
indifferently honest, a liar, a slanderer and 
a tattler, guilty of every minor baseness, 
and yet be held in good and honourable 
92 



THE SECRET LIFE 

repute. The wonder is that woman's 
morals survived at all so false a training! 
Centuries of such teaching wrought their 
wretched work despite all the forces of 
nature. Virginity instead of purity be- 
came the ideal of the highest type of woman, 
who shrank from the fulfilment of her 
functions as a stepping down, instead of 
glorying in it as the fulfilment of her sacred 
purpose. What had been urged upon her 
upon every side she endeavoured to con- 
form to in the spirit as well as the letter. 
Her mind strained towards the virginal as 
well as her body. The higher type of 
woman cried out to man for spiritual rather 
than physical love, and she found his 
natural sane tenderness for her person bru- 
tal rather than beautiful. The young girl, 
seduously guarded from knowledge of the 
fundamental reasons of her being, cast sud- 
denly and unprepared into marriage, shrank 
with disgust from a relation which her hus- 
band — educated in wholeness of thought 
— regarded as the culmination of the flower 
of life into its fruit. It is not too much 
to say that four fifths of all modest, pure 
girls — as a result of their foolish training 

93 



THE SECRET LIFE 

— contemplated the sexual relation with 
the bitterest reluctance. They had been 
led to believe that virginity was in itself a 
virtue, instead of regarding it only as the 
sanctification of the body until such time 
as it legitimately becomes the temple of 
life. With many this feeUng survived mar- 
riage, and embittered it to both the wife, 
who resented what she looked upon as a 
baser nature in the man, and to the man 
who resented, and was rebuffed by the 
coldness of his companion. 

At least half of the disappointments and 
failures of marriage arose from the mis- 
taken training of good women. 

Ten years ago this Patristic ideal still 
had a strong hold upon the race, but the 
long centuries of study of the Latin and 
Greek literatures in the schools finally, 
almost suddenly, bore fruit. We had 
through our school boys and girls imbibed 
the spirit of the two European races whom 
the Semitic influences had never domi- 
nated. One wonders that some foolish so- 
called progressives should now be wishing 
to drop those literatures from the curricu- 
lum of students, though perhaps their work 
94 



THE SECRET LIFE 

is done. At all events we hear very little 
now of this talk of the inferiority of women. 
When the miracles of male achievement 
are pointed to to-day, women know enough 
to say proudly, "Did man make this? 
Well, I made man"; and is content. 

May 4. Seville. 

What a people are these, — these Span- 
iards! This afternoon — Sunday — I saw 
my first bull-fight. One need xhe 
never wonder again at the Roman Beauty of 
Arena and its horrors. It is as "*«*y- 
incredible that human beings can sit through 
such spectacles as that women could have 
reversed their thumbs when a staggering, 
bloody barbarian turned up a glazed eye 
to seek mercy. . . . And this, after two 
thousand years of Catholicism, of Chris- 
tianity! 

These Spaniards say — staring stupidly 
at your horror — **Mas, no es Cristianos. 
They are only animals." Animals! — and 
yet Christians dare talk of divine mercy; 
of their faith having softened hearts, and 
sweetened human nature. Civilization has 
done so, in truth, but where this faith reigns 

95 



THE SECRET LIFE 

most arbitrarily such an atrocious spectacle 
is permissible; goes undenounced of its 
priests. 

It is not the baser sort alone who love 
this cowardly butchery. In the same box 
with ourselves sat a woman and her two 
daughters, evidently members of the upper 
classes. The arena below was crowded 
with the people — women in sulphur-col- 
oured shawls, embroidered with sharp blues 
and scarlets — men of all classes — dan- 
dies and workmen cheek by jowl — but 
the rows of boxes above held the women 
and children of the well-to-do, even the 
aristocracy. The Royal family itself pat- 
ronizes the arena. 

The women, whose faces I watched in- 
stead of the shambles after the fight began, 
grew devilish, a hard smile drew their lips 
back over their teeth; their eyes ghttered; 
a look of lust strained the lines about the 
nose. They forced the children — some 
of whom cried, and shrank from the horrid 
sight — to turn and see the blood and the 
struggle. 

I believe the secret charm of this gory 
game to many is the prick that the sight of 

96 



THE SECRET LIFE 

blood gives to the senses. The history 
of war is full of evidence of this fact — that 
the sight of horrors spurs the passions. It 
was curious to think that many of the people 
there owed their existence to just such a 
stimulus as this. Cruelty thus Ues, heredi- 
tarily, at the very roots of their being; in- 
tensified in each generation. 

For the same reason, I suppose, that so 
much of my life seems to me a glamour 
of tangled shadows, elusive and shifting, 
with no definite line between the real and 
the unreal, between to-day and all the 
yesterdays — for that reason the arena's 
gaunt, windowless walls and passages 
seemed startlingly familiar. Equally fa- 
miliar the yellow, sand-strewn circle; the 
glaring blue sky above the bright-coloured 
maelstrom of faces; the whirl of fans all 
around the ring — as of a circle of innu- 
merable dancing butterflies; the cries of the 
venders; the clang of the trumpets; the 
glitter of the tinsel and gew-gaws; the bold 
rush of the black bull; the quick spatter of 
the applauding hands. . . . 

No animal was ever more beautiful than 
this splendid beast, the perfect focus of 
97 



THE SECRET LIFE 

power and rage. He knew that he was 
facing murder. There was desperation in 
his glance from the first moment, but he 
simply didn't know the meaning of cow- 
ardice. He knew there was no use in any- 
thing he might do; that his courage, and 
beauty, and long battle for life, would not 
stir to pity one of those hard, handsome 
faces with their dark shaven jaws and tight 
lips, but he struck at his foes with all his 
force in mere sullen fury. He tore open 
the beUies of the shivering, sweating, blind- 
folded horses, who staggered a few steps 
trailing their entrails in the sand and then 
crumpled helplessly; he caught a man in 
the breast and tossed him over the barrier 
with blood spurting from the hole his horn 
had made. He himself leaped the fence 
once, as agile as a deer, and brushed the 
crowd back like flies, but he did it all with- 
out a sign of hope, and never made a sound. 
Pricked, goaded, red streams running 
over his satin skin and searing his eyes, 
stumbling wildly here and there, his sides 
sunk in, his muzzle dragging in the dust, 
dumb, dull fury in his heart at his useless 
torture, spurred to new effort by explosive 

98 



THE SECRET LIFE 

darts that tore his flesh into gory, pendu- 
lous ribbons, hissed by the women, he fell 
at last upon his knees in blind helpless- 
ness. . . . 

How it ended I don't know. A rage of 
horror squeezed my heart till the tears 
spurted from my lids. It seemed necessary 
to seize some weapon and slaughter indis- 
criminately the men who were murdering 
this poor brute for mere amusement, the 
women who were hissing his death throes. 
In such horrid sequence does cruelty 
engender cruelty. 

The people about me regarded my emo- 
tion and retreat with surprise and con- 
tempt. Some such sensation, I suppose, 
as would have been felt by a Roman who 
should have seen me shed tears when the 
big cats of the arena crushed the bones of 
some brave young barbarian or Christian. 
These creatures were so far beneath him 
in the scale of existence that he could not 
conceive of any poignancy of suffering or 
emotion in such a mere animal. Was not 
one hair of a Roman worth many sparrows 
— or Christians ? 

The Jewish democrat tried to teach the 

99 



THE SECRET LIFE 

world to recognize the value of the indi- 
vidual, the sanctity of each human life — 
when will a Christ of the beasts arise ? 

May 5. 

This old world, with its horrors and its 
beauties, how tame it makes our smug, 
comfortable America appear! . . . Yester- 
day I wished to make a hecatomb of the 
Spaniards. To-day I forgive them every- 
thing because of the SevilHan dancers. 
My lusts are all of the eye. I can quite 
conceive Herod tossing the Baptist's head 
to the supple Salome in an ecstasy of 
approval. Dancing, when it is good, is 
more beautiful to me than music. And 
this dancing is very good. 

The muscular gymnastics, which modern 
Italy has imposed upon the world as dan- 
cing, are as dissimilar from the real thing 
as the fiorituri singing is from the old bel 
canto. The Spaniards make dancing — as 
all arts should be made — the poetical ex- 
pression of life and love. Such ardour and 
seduction, such abandon to the joy of living, 
such rage and daring, such delicate coquetry 
and wild wooing! . . . there is nothing like 
100 



THE SECRET LIFE 

it out of Spain, the country where they 
torture helpless animals for sport. 

Is there, perhaps, some secret tie between 
cruelty and beauty; between crime and 
art ? It is certain that religious reformers 
have always thought so, and have acted 
with logical fury. In our peaceful, decent 
country, beauty, except such as Nature her- 
self affords, is rare. A race that loves its 
neighbour as itself seems incapable of creat- 
ing an art. The good Swiss have done 
nothing for the mind's delight: the virtuous 
Spartans could not even appreciate love- 
liness when they saw it. Nearly all the 
great periods of flowering in art come after 
the roots of a nation have been watered in 
blood, after some frightful crise of suffering. 
It would seem as if bringing forth must be 
always accompanied by birth-pangs. 

May 7. Granada. 

H said that the greatness of a people 

depended upon its trees. This sounded 
rather cryptic, and I entreated him ^j^^ j^^^^ 
to be more diffuse. We were ofWeiiing- 
walking home from that enchanted *°°'^ 

... Trees. 

garden, owned by the Pallavicini, 

lOI 



THE SECRET LIFE 

which rewarded the Moor for betraying 
his city. The May moon was shining on 
the white mountain tops, and the jargoning 
of the snow-brooks sounded about our feet. 
The air smelled of orange flowers and roses, 
and the nightingales were shouting in the 
gloom of those one hundred thousand trees 
planted by the Duke of Wellington. 

"This Spanish peninsula," H said, 

"under the rule of the Moors, supported 
thirty millions of people in comfort. The 
Christian kings allowed the upland forests 
to be ruthlessly sacrificed, and now look at 
Spain." 

"One swallow" — I quoted. "Will one 
instance support a theory ? " 

"No; but I could give you a dozen. 
Carlyle and the rest of the historians have 
talked the fearfulest rot about France under 
the monarchy which preserved her forests. 
Of course, every one has weakly credited 
the stories of oppression and starvation in 
aristocratic France. And yet the sons of 
these peasants, who were pitifully pictured 
snatching at leaves of those forests for food, 
overran Europe. I don't beheve that chil- 
dren bred in starvation could ever have 

102 



THE SECRET LIFE 

had the vitality to be conquerors. At all 
events, when the land was divided and the 
forests delivered to spoliation, the popula- 
tion of France began to decline. Possibly 
the modern effort at reforesting the country- 
may arrest that decline." 

"Just hsten to the noise of those nightin- 
gales," I said. "Do you suppose we shall 
be able to sleep ? " 

May 15. Naples. 

The Pompeian bronze, which the guide 
books and catalogues name The Boy with 
the Goose, is quite wrongly named. xhe Boy 
The lad carries a wine-skin. The with;the 
rude, swollen outlines of the pig °°^®' 
are clear, and the attitude of the boy one may 
see any water-seller in Tangier assume 
when called upon for a drink — the arm 
raised, the body tilted back upon the hip 
to elevate the Up of the skin, so that no 
more water may flow than is needed. The 
whole, a dehcious bit of genre, smiling and 
vivid after two thousand years. 

There is a curious vitality of a trifling 
custom discoverable here in the Pompeian 
museum. The great bronze horses of Balbo 
103 



THE SECRET LIFE 

have forelocks wrapped and twisted in ex- 
actly the same fashion that still prevails 
all along this Neapolitan shore. The breed 
has changed utterly; bone and structure 
have altered and shrunk, but the vetturino, 
who drives through the streets of Naples 
to-day, twists up that bit of hair in exactly 
the same manner as did the coachman of 
Glaucus or Balbo. 

May 30. Rome. 

How beautiful upon the mountains are 
the feet of — Apollo! ... I have to-day, 
for the first time, seen a god. 

He stands in the Vatican, and follows, 
with upthrown head and far-seeing eye, 
A God the flight of the golden arrow that 
Indeed. slays the serpent of the miasmatic 
marsh. One feels a sad tenderness for 
the poor bleeding deity, who hangs dead 
and helpless from a thousand crucifixes 
here in Rome, but to-day, for the first 
time in my life, I felt the impulse to fall 
on my knees and worship. Here is at last, 
and indeed a god, whose fine feet dis- 
dain the earth, whose proud youth never 
knew suff^ering or defeat. Here is the 
104 



THE SECRET LIFE 

embodiment of the ideal of the European — 
beauty, heahh, power. How he must smile 
to stand here, merely a statue, in the place 
where the Christian reigns, amid luxury 
and pomp, in the name of the sorrowful 
Hebrew democrat who had not a place to 
lay his head. Apollo's ideal, his worship, 
still remains dominant, though they call 
his religion by another name. The Euro- 
pean remains, and always will remain, a 
pagan; none more pagan than the popes 
with their lust for temporal power. 

Only here in Rome is it possible to realize 
the long struggle for supremacy between 
the European and Semitic ideas; for here 
is gathered the bulk of the relics of Greece 
— mother and nurse of our race — who 
early broke the bonds of Asiatic thought 
and sought her own development, material 
rather than spiritual (if one accepts the 
theory that spirit and matter are divisible), 
sensuous rather than mystical, concerned 
more with the well-being of the body and 
the freedom and vigour of the mind than 
with the condition of the soul. She who 
threw herself with passion into the arms of 
Nature, and worshipped only the subli- 
105 



THE SECRET LIFE 

mated human characteristics and visible 
natural forces deified into exquisite personi- 
fications. She who exalted the beauty and 
health of the body into a cult, strove after 
the demonstrable truths of science, and 
loved man as he was — humorously loved 
him with all his faults and limitations, 
rather than an impossible ideal of him. 

Here in Rome one finds all the records 
of the next great development of the Euro- 
pean Erd-geist — the growth of its genius 
in military, social, and political organiza- 
tion. Still, as in Greece, clinging to the 
aristocratic ideal; to the rule of the strong 
and gifted. The fruit did not exist for the 
benefit of the vine ; the vine existed to pro- 
duce, to nourish, to minister to the perfect 
culmination of its species in the fruit, 
which drank its sap as of right. Here 
again the European followed Nature,, that 
Arch-Aristocrat who destroys multitudes 
to produce a few perfect specimens — 
whose right is always might. 

The Asian conquests brought again in- 
roads of Asian thought; more particularly 
the thought of that small tribe, the quintes- 
sential of Semitism, which was ever engaged 
1 06 



THE SECRET LIFE 

in revolt against nature, and maintaining 
democratic convictions in the teeth of all 
experience. Impatient of rulers, but sub- 
missive to those who scourged the impulses 
of their appetites. Scornful of kings, and 
turning from beauty and genius to exalt the 
insane and insect-ridden fakir with knotted 
unshorn locks who muttered vague proph- 
ecies. Struggling always to escape from 
the grip of the inevitable cruelties of natural 
forces by opposing to them bloody sacrifices 
and cruel self-restraints — flowering at last 
into that supreme incarnation of the Semi- 
tic mind called Jesus Christ, who wrested 
from asceticism a dream of a panacea for 
the brutalities of the laws of life. The 
misshapen and undeveloped fruit of the 
tree of existence, the windfalls — always 
a vast majority — received with ecstasy 
this new gospel, absurd but fascinating, 
which denied actualities and promised im- 
possibiHties. The feeble majority clutched 
at a power denied them by nature, and 
only by outwardly accepting the new tenets 
were the strong few able to maintain their 
old dominance. 

Nietsche's "blond savage*' pouring in 
107 



THE SECRET LIFE 

from the north found Rome disintegrated 
by this Asian influence, and unable to 
discern that the new faith was not an in- 
tegral part of the civilization whose splen- 
dour dazzled him, accepted this theory of 
life as part of the lesson he set himself 
humbly to learn at the feet of Italy. 

Hence followed that blind welter of 
mediaevaUsm; the material genius of the 
European race struggling in the bonds of 
a creed entirely foreign and unsympathetic. 
The strong still ruled, as always, but 
ruled by new formulae, and moistened with 
blood and kneaded by swords the hard 
paste of the European Aryan was leavened 
by Semitism. Not willingly; never en- 
tirely. A thousand years after Rome's 
acceptance of the new cult the re-discovery 
of the old art and philosophy of Greece 
intoxicated Europe with joy. Here was 
something of her own — natural to her — 
sympathetic. The Renaissance became an 
ecstasy of negation of the heavy yoke under 
which her neck had so long been bowed. 
Learning again was glorious. The phi- 
losopher dared assert his superiority to 
dirty, ignorant scions of the gutter, who 
io8 



THE SECRET LIFE 

had claimed equality with sovereigns by 
reason of not eating three meals a day, 
and because of the virtue which lay in the 
frequent recitation of gibberish. Art aban- 
doned its endless repetitions of a single 
theme, and essayed in faltering delight to 
rival the glorious fragments of those who 
had made nature their model and had 
joyed to picture Hfe in all its rich grace 
and charm. The Western world stood 
once more upon its feet and burst into a 
rapture of creation. It laughed to scorn 
the narrow commands of Semitic asceti- 
cism against the graven image. Once more 
it allowed the beauty of visible nature to 
pour through its veins in a rich, fecundating 
flood. 

But after all, the leaven had reached 
every part, and had tinctured it past any 
possible casting out. Never could the Eu- 
ropean be free of Asian influence. The 
pendulum has swung back and forth ever 
since — ever moving a little higher toward 
the side of the natural, material develop- 
ment of the race, but ever checked and 
brought back to the old Jewish revolt 
against nature. To-day the influence of 
109 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Asia shows itself in the absurdities of de- 
mocracy, the phantasies of socialism. 

. . . One of the most curious phases of 
the whole question is that the Jew — dis- 
persed throughout the Western world — 
has entirely succumbed to the very ideas 
which he overthrew. He is the artist, the 
materialist of our times! 

June i. 

The portrait busts of the Romans were 
their highest achievements in art. One 
A sees literally thousands of them in 

Question Italy, and their painstaking accu- 
° " ^* racy is obvious. What is to me 
most interesting is that the sculptured 
Roman head and face might easily be 
taken for a portrait of the English people 
of to-day. In any congregation of the 
English governing classes will be found 
constantly reproduced the long, narrow 
skull, the bold aquiline nose, the stern lips 
and chin, and that clean fleshless outline 
of the Roman — resembling the keen model- 
ling of the head of the high-bred horse — 
repeated so frequently in marble and por- 
phyry in all these museums, 
no 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Can it be that Empire reproduces the 
type ? Yet ethnologists trust more to the 
shape of the skull in the study of race affin- 
ities than to any other proof. The modern 
Italian skull is the extreme opposite in 
type; is short and broad; so indeed is the 
skull of all the continental races of Europe. 
I know that the skull measurements are 
not supposed to give this result, but to the 
eye the EngUsh alone seem to possess this 
long, narrow skull. 

Amusing also is it to remark that the 
Roman women were not handsome. In 
both races the resemblance between the 
sexes is too strong. The fine, bony, equine 
type, so admirable in the male Roman 
and Englishman, becomes hardness in the 
women, who lack seduction and charm. 
Also curious to note, there is the same proud 
grace of costume and coiffure in the men; 
the same ugliness and lack of taste in the 
arrangement of the hair and dress of the 
women of the two races. 

London. June 30. 

H and I dined last night with Mary 

L at the Carleton, and H asked 

III 



THE SECRET LIFE 

her, in his large generic fashion, what every- 
The body had been doing at home dur- 

Modern j^^g ^^j. absence. 

and *'Oh, having their appendices 
Marriage, cut out and getting divorced ! " she 
said flippantly, and H laughed out- 
rageously, so that people turned and stared. 
It was probably the lobster we ate that made 
me think her remark more pathetic than 
funny while I turned it over in my mind 
all the long hours I lay awake. 

Howells has said, with only humorous 
apology, that his sex, after nineteen hun- 
dred years, is but imperfectly monogamous, 
and yet our modern women are beginning 
to treat marriage so disrespectfully, and 
change partners for life as light-heartedly 
as if the engagement was as unimportant 
as an engagement for a dance! 

That even this imperfect measure of 
self-denial and fidelity has been arrived 
at by men seems to me to be almost solely 
due to the women of the past. I know 
the Church claims — in her usual arrogant 
way — that she should have the credit of 
it, but Lecky says in his ''European 
Morals": 

112 



THE SECRET LIFE 

"The first consequence of the promi- 
nence of asceticism was a profound dis- 
credit thrown upon the domestic virtues. 
The extent to which this discredit was 
carried, the intense hardness of heart and 
ingratitude manifested by the saints to- 
wards those who were bound to them by 
the closest of earthly ties, is known to few 
who have not studied the original literature 
on the subject. These things are commonly 
thrown into the shade by sentimentalists 
who delight in idealizing the devotees of 
the past. To break by his ingratitude the 
heart of the mother who had borne him, 
to persuade the wife who adored him that 
it was her duty to separate from him for 
ever, to abandon his children, uncared for 
and beggars, to the mercies of the world, 
was regarded by the true hermit as the 
most acceptable offering he could make to 
his God." 

The root of family life is not mutual 
affection between man and woman, because 
that, alas ! — whether it be founded on 
physical attraction or mental affinity — is 
subject to change. Age withers, and cus- 
tom stales it: circumstance blights it, a 
113 



THE SECRET LIFE 

diversity of spiritual growth rends it apart, 
and no man or woman can say with cer- 
tainty that it will endure for a lifetime. 
But the fluctuations to which wedded love 
is subject are unknown to the self-abne- 
gating instinct of parenthood. Mutual af- 
fection for the off^spring will hold together 
the most opposite natures; it will rivet for 
all existence two lives that must otherwise 
inevitably spring asunder by instinctive 
repulsion. 

Love of offspring is in man a cultivated 
emotion; in woman an instinct. There are 
women lacking the instinct as there are 
calves born with two heads, but for pur- 
poses of generalization these exceptions 
may be ignored. In many of the lower 
orders of Hfe the female is obliged to protect 
the young from the enmity of the male 
parent. The alligator finds no meal so 
refreshing as a light lunch off his newly 
hatched children, and the male swine shares 
this epicurean taste for tender offspring. 
The stallion is a dangerous companion for 
the mare with colt at foot, though the colt 
be of his own get, and many species of male 
appear to experience a similar jealousy of 
114 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the young while absorbing the attentions 
of the female. Speaking generally of the 
animal world, the young are obliged to look 
to the mother entirely for food and care 
during the period of helplessness. With 
savage man of the lower grade the paternal 
instinct is still faint and rudimentary, and 
even where the woman has, through long 
ages of endeavour, succeeded in cultivating 
in the heart of the other parent a fair imita- 
tion of her own affection, this affection, 
being a cultivated emotion and not an 
instinct, frequently breaks down under stress 
of misbehaviour or frowardness on the part 
of the child. 

To this end, then, — that end "toward 
which the whole creation moves, " — to 
effect this result of an equal care and affec- 
tion for the offspring, all the energies of 
women have been bent for ages. 

She has fought polygamy with incessant 
hatred; not only for its injury to herself, 
but its constant menace to her children. 
The secret strings of the woman's heart 
are wrapped about the fruit of her own 
flesh, but the desire of the man is to the 
woman, and this desire she has used as a 
115 



THE SECRET LIFE 

lever to work her will — not consciously, 
perhaps, not with reasoned forethought, 
but with the iron tenacity of blind instinct. 
Reasoned will may be baffled or deflected, 
but water can by no means be induced to 
run up hill; and so while woman has been 
apparently as fluidly yielding as water — 
to be led here and driven there according 
to the will of her master — she has stuck to 
her own ends with a silent persistency that 
has always tired out opposition at last. 
She has, like Charity, sufi^ered all things, 
endured all things; she has been all things 
to all men. She has yielded all outward 
show of authority; she has submitted to 
be scoffed at as an inferior creation, to be 
sneered at for feebleness and shallow-mind- 
edness, to be laughed at for chattering incon- 
sequence, and to be regarded as a toy and 
trifle to amuse man's leisure hours, or as a 
dull drudge for his convenience, for ends 
are not achieved by talking about them. 
All the ages of masculine discussion of the 
Eternal Feminine show no reply from her, 
but to-day the world is a woman's world. 
Civilization has, under the unrelaxing 
pressure of endless generations of her per- 
ii6 



THE SECRET LIFE 

sistent will, been bent to her ends. Polyg- 
amy is routed, and the errant fancy of 
the male tamed to yield itself to a single 
yoke. She has, "with bare and bloody feet, 
climbed the steep road of wide empire," 
but to-day she stands at the top — mistress 
of the world. Man, with his talents, his 
strength, and his selfishness, has been 
tamed to her hand. The sensual, domi- 
nant brute with whom she began what 
Max Nordau calls *'the toilsome, slow 
ascent of the long curve leading up to 
civilization," stands beside her to-day, hat 
in hand, her lover — husband ; tender, faith- 
ful, courteous, and indulgent. 

This is the conquest that has been made, 
the crown and throne achieved by the silent, 
uneducated woman of the past. 

Monogamous marriage is the foundation 
stone on which has been built her power; 
a power which, while it has enured to her 
own benefit, has not been exercised for 
selfish ends. She has raised the relation 
between man and herself from a mere con- 
tract of sensuality or convenience to a 
spiritual sacrament within whose limits the 
purest and most exalted of human emotions 
117 



THE SECRET LIFE 

find play. For the coarse indulgence and 
bitter enmities of polygamy has been sub- 
stituted the happiest of bonds, in which 
the higher natures find room for the subtlest 
and completest felicities, and within which 
the man, the woman, and the child form a 
holy trinity of mutual love and well-being. 

To this jewel, so hardly won, so long 
toiled for, it would be natural to suppose 
that woman would cHng with all the force 
of her nature; all the more as education 
broadened her capacity for reflection and 
deepened her consciousness of self. On 
the contrary, the little learning she has so 
far acquired seems, as usual, a dangerous 
thing, and with the development of self- 
consciousness the keen, unerring flair of her 
instinct for the one thing needful has been 
blunted and enfeebled. It is not neces- 
sary to give undue weight to the blatant 
and empty-headed crew who announce 
marriage to be a failure, and that women 
are tired of, and will no longer submit to, 
child-bearing. There are crowing hens in 
all barnyards, and their loud antics never 
materially affect the price of eggs. 

But that the women of our own time 
ii8 



THE SECRET LIFE 

should treat marriage — that hard-won, 
dear-bought triumph — with such profligate 
recklessness amazes me. We are making 
ducks and drakes of the treasure heaped 
up for us by our mothers. How long will 
this imperfectly monogamous animal re- 
spect an institution which is all for our 
benefit, if we ourselves regard it so lightly ? 

The modern woman is so spoiled, so 
indulged, that she does not realize how 
much a man gives and how little he gets 
in marriage. He gives a half, sometimes 
— indeed often — more than half, of his 
earnings, his name and its honour, his pro- 
tection and defence of her person, and a 
lifelong responsibility for her and her chil- 
dren, and he gets — what ? Her person, 
and it is to be hoped her affection. The 
woman of the present day lays too much 
stress upon this gift of her person. She 
appears to think that this gift alone renders 
man her eternal debtor. To speak a Uttle 
brutally, he knows that he can easily buy 
a hke gift elsewhere and for a less price. 

I remember that last year Alice com- 
plained of some of Ned's small foibles. 

"Oh, you must be patient with him," 
119 



THE SECRET LIFE 

I said. "Think how much he gives you; 
home, name, support, protection — every- 
thing. He works hard for you every day. 
You are under tremendous obligations to 
him." 

"Well, if you put it that way — " she 
answered resentfully, "but don't I give 
him love and affection in return ?'* 

"Yes," I countered triumphantly, "but 
he gives you equal love and all these other 
things beside. It seems to me there's no 
question who gives most." 

She opened her eyes rather wide and 
looked thoughtful. 

July 17. 

It being the "silly season" a controversy 
is raging in the daily papers as to the ideal 
The Ideal wifc and the ideal husband, and 
Husband, rnuch Correspondence is occurring 
under various anonyms. 

Alas! — the only ideal husband who ever 
lived married the only ideal wife ever born. 
They were cut off in the flower of their 
youth — some time during the first years 
of the PUocene Period — and minute fossil 
fragments of their bones are now worn as 
120 



THE SECRET LIFE 

relics by pious celibates, and are said to 
have worked miracles. 

Of so potent an essence are their mere 
memories, it is said his knightly ghost haunts 
the rosy chambers of all maiden dreams, 
and men seeking Her Hke find all other 
women less desirable because of her fabled 
virtues. 

I suppose all girls see him more or less 
in their lovers. Imagination deceptively 
moulds their features to a similacrum of 
that noble legendary person, until the fierce 
light which beats upon the married reveals 
the unprepossessing traits of plain every- 
day humanity. Yet every woman begins 
her sentimental life with hopes unabated 
by the depressing failures of others. 

A most quaint and charming creature — 
this ideal who haunts the dreams of maiden- 
hood! Compounded all of purity and pas- 
sion, of chivalry and grace, of vigour and 
beauty. He can in moments of excitement 
tie the poker into love-knots, and has a 
hand of velvet with which to touch the 
dreamer*s curls. A ruler of men, he is to 
be led by a single golden hair. Capable 
of volcanic passion, which renders him in- 

121 



THE SECRET LIFE 

different to meals or to fatigue, he can yet 
be moved to these ecstasies by but a single 
member of the sex, and despite snubs or 
coquetry can live for decades upon the mere 
hope of her favour. He excels in all manly 
prowess and diversions, and yet is never 
guilty of causing the loved one to mourn 
his absence during a golf widowhood. He 
adores poetry and is superior to all vulgar 
commercialism, and yet manages — in that 
simple fashion known only to ideals — to 
accumulate a fortune and be generous in 
the matter of diamonds. He combines in 
one stalwart person all the virtues of Gala- 
had, Arthur, Launcelot, and Baron Roths- 
child. 

Later on the wife develops an ideal less 
magnificently ornamental than this choice 
collection of bric-a-brac virtues. The 
married idol must be thoroughly domesti- 
cated: prepared to throw himself with 
enthusiasm into the study of croup and 
measles; is deeply versed in the matter of 
female domestic service, and yet so full 
of tact as to be able to obliterate himself 
at moments of domestic crisis. Like the 
ideal servant, he must be never in the way 

122 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and never out of it. He must be uncritical 
of failure, yet capable of enthusiasm for 
success; unselfish as a saint, yet command- 
ing the secret of worldly achievement ; and 
above all he must be hopelessly blind to 
the virtues and charms of every woman 
but his wife. 

Taste as to details may differ according 
to temperament, nationality, and social 
condition, but, broadly speaking, this de- 
lightful person with his eccentric combi- 
nation of qualities figures in the abstract 
affections of all women. 

But these are dreams; diversions of 
those pleasant moments when the human 
moth allows itself, with futile richness of 
imagination, to consider the star as a pos- 
sible companion, and it seems useless to 
hope that such a person will ever appear in 
this sinful and unworthy world. 

Perhaps from time to time a man who 
faintly reflects the luminous charms of this 
knightly husband-saint does arise to cheer 
and comfort the weaker sex and keep their 
hopes and ideals alive, but the "Mauds," 
and "Charlottes," and "Mrs. S. F. J.s," 
who have been extolling his attractions in 
123 



THE SECRET LIFE 

print, seem not to have prayerfully con- 
sidered whether they themselves were fit 
mates for, or capable of satisfying the ideals 
of, this wholly impossible he. There is far 
less talk about the ideal wife — for two 
reasons, I suppose. One is that men have 
less time for chattering generalizations, and 
the other — alas! — is that men are far 
less interested in women than are women 
in men. 

The American is supposed to more 
nearly approach this high standard than the 
men of any other nationality, but that typical 
American husband of novels has, I must 
confess, always seemed to me a paltry, 
bourgeois creature, with the soul of a bank 
clerk, a neglected mind, and with a low 
estimate and a sort of amused indulgence of 
women as pretty, fantastic, inconsequent 
children with an insane greed of luxury. 

Of course, it is heresy to say so, but my 
observation leads me to think that American 
women hold a general position far inferior 
to the women of Europe. The American 
man is pre-eminently generous to them in 
material things. Often while he slaves and 
goes shabby himself he is wiUing to meta- 
124 



THE SECRET LIFE 

phorically back a van up to the coal-hole 
and fill the cellar full of jewels, but he denies 
to his women that whose price is above 
rubies — his own society. Why is Ameri- 
can society made up of women ? What is 
the cause of our superfluity of women's 
clubs, committees, and classes ? What place 
has the middle-aged or elderly woman in 
America except as the mother of her 
daughters, or the dispenser of her husband's 
hospitahties and charities ? 

After the period of sex-attraction has 
passed women have no power in America. 
Who ever sees here, as is so often seen in 
Europe, an elderly woman's drawing-rooms 
filled with politicians, financiers, artists, 
who come for the refreshment and stimula- 
tion of her ideas and conversation } Men- 
tally American women do not interest 
American men. 

July 23. 

Louisa has become a raging Christian 
Scientist. 

A distant memory returns to me. Once 
upon a time there was a little girl who, 
after the manner of her sex, feared greatly 
125 



THE SECRET LIFE 

all and sundry of certain fierce beasts, 
among which were to be enumerated rats, 
A New mice, bumblebees, and more viv- 
Law of idly and especially DOGS — whose 
®** * culminating direfulness was only 
to be expressed in italicized capitals. On a 
day, being bidden to go across the village 
street to deliver a note to an opposite 
neighbour, she set out, radiating the pleas- 
ing results of soap, brushes, and a clean 
pinafore, but on reaching the gate came 
to a sudden pause. A specimen of the 
worst of enemies, who seemed to the per- 
spective of an eye only three feet from the 
ground to easily rival an elephant in size, 
lay prone across the path, lolling an intimi- 
dating tongue, and rolling an eye which, 
though outwardly calm, might be guessed 
to conceal a horrid intent. There was a 
swish of short starched skirts, a twinkle 
of bare knees, and appeal was made to 
that infallible power and knowledge which 
Providence has so wisely placed in mothers. 
Being a person of nimble imagination this 
particular parent, realizing that a mastiff 
as large in proportion to her own inches 
as this one was to the normal height of five 
126 



THE SECRET LIFE 

years might well daunt her own courage, 
forbore to remonstrate or use reason. 

"Here," she said placidly, *'is a lump 
of sugar. Put it on your tongue and hold 
it there. Of course, no dog will touch a 
person who has sugar on her tongue." 

And so fortified, Five Years set forth 
with a conviction of immunity that carried 
her triumphantly past the source of terror. 
The incident is not in itself, perhaps, of his- 
toric importance, but is a particularly vivid 
example of the absolute divorce in the unde- 
veloped mind between the laws of cause 
and effect, and in no department of human 
thought has that divorce continued so long 
as in the science of health. Every one of 
us can revive out of childhood a memory 
of the balm that overspread the injured 
temple when a sympathetic nurse bestowed 
the richly deserved spanking upon the 
offending chair corner that had caused the 
pain, or applied the clearly indicated plaster 
of a kiss; and medicine in its long career 
has followed the intelligent example of the 
nursery. But while medicine as a science 
has passed out of this stage with the gen- 
eral growth of knowledge, the bulk of 
127 



THE SECRET LIFE 

mankind still continues to put sugar on the 
tongue as a protection against dogs, to 
castigate chair corners, and to apply reme- 
dies as unknown to the pharmacopoeia as 
the feminine kiss. Perhaps the stolen po- 
tato carried in the pocket, or the bit of red 
flannel bound on the left wrist, are not so 
trusted a remedy for the pangs of rheuma- 
tism as they were fifty years ago, and the 
dried heart of a mouse worn in a bag about 
the neck seems to have lost its potency 
against epileptic seizures, yet the very large 
sums spent annually upon patent medi- 
cines — rivalling in amount what is known 
in temperance circles as the "Drink Bill" 
— and the rise and popularity of innu- 
merable mushroom *' cures" and systems, 
proves that the laws of health are still as 
heterogeneous from the intelligence of the 
majority of mankind as are the laws of the 
differential calculus. 

It would be diverting, were it not so 
pathetic, to see the constant endeavour on 
the part of the multitude to lift itself by its 
own hygienic boot-straps in the form of 
barefoot cures, mind cures, prayer cures, 
cures by clairvoyance, by magnetism, red or 
128 



THE SECRET LIFE 

blue lights, or by pilgrimages and relics. 
The child moving about in worlds unreal- 
ized is still the father and epitome of the 
man, and sees no reason why his own will, 
or that of some Power wiping him indi- 
vidually well, should not break through the 
immutable sequence of cause and effect, or 
upset the machinery of the universe in 
his behalf. His childish "Let's pretend" 
sweeps away for the moment the dull per- 
sistency of facts and opens a world where 
it is possible to eat one's cake and have.it 
too, and after dancing escape the bill for 
the fiddling. 

Speaking accurately there is, of course, 
no such thing as a new law of health — 
such laws being of their very nature eternal 
— but a consciousness of the hygienic code 
is as new as was the discovery not more than 
a century ago of the forces of electricity, 
which had, though the most powerful agent 
upon the earth, lain ready to our hands 
unrecognized throughout recorded time. 

The unfortunate fact that the world of 

knowledge is not a globe is shown by this — 

that if, in setting out toward a fixed goal of 

truth, one's face is turned in the wrong 

129 



THE SECR ET LIFE 

direction, no length of travel, no miracle 
of persistency, ever conducts to the haven 
where one would be. A truth of moral 
geography by no means universally accepted 
as yet, and indeed certain inherent tenden- 
cies of human nature, will forever prevent 
its unanimous acceptance, a chronic child- 
ishness of mind being so common that one 
would almost despair of the acceptance of 
any new truth, were it not that the adult 
intelligence of the few eventually imposes 
its conclusions upon the multitude, or en- 
forces at least an outward concurrence. 
The immature-minded many are always 
lusting after a sign of the wonderful, and 
kicking against the pricks of plain truth. 
Bullied out of crediting the existence of 
ghosts and fairies, they earnestly engage 
in burning witches, and shamed out of 
such mistaken zeal fling themselves into 
the arms of spiritualist mediums, flirt with 
the theosophists, or die under the minis- 
trations of Christian Scientists. The whole 
history of supernaturalism has been the 
history of travel in the wrong direction — 
a wrong turning that had its beginning in a 
childish impatience that would attain to its 
130 



THE SECRET LIFE 

end by sudden leaps in lieu of dusty plod- 
ding along the highway that led by slow 
windings to the desired end. 

Man found painful barriers of time, space, 
and physical decay fencing him out of his 
Eden of gratified desire, and Hke a child 
he straightway fell to dreaming of flying 
carpets, of magic lamps, of transmutable 
metals, of fountains of youth and elixirs of 
life. At first these miracles were thought 
to be the gifts of shadowy, higher powers, 
who were happily superior to the cruel 
Hmits of material existence, and might give 
their assistance according to their capri- 
cious elfin fancy. Later, man began to be- 
lieve that in himself lay the powers which 
were to break the chains that bound him 
the unhappy slave of distance, of the need 
for labour, of the tyrannies of nature, with 
her resistless heat and cold, storm and 
flood, pain and age. A glimmering of the 
truth, this, at last, but only a faint reflection 
on the horizon of the rising sun, on which 
he had turned his back. There followed 
a period of fasts and macerations whose 
courage and persistency was to make the 
gods tremble in respectful terror — a tri- 
131 



THE SECRET LIFE 

umph over material passions which should 
give an occult power over material limita- 
tions. The Buddhists stood moveless and 
speechless until the birds reared their young 
in their hair, and thereby were supposed 
to grow so mighty that the mountains 
rocked beneath the weight of their thoughts, 
and space and time were annihilated. 

Superb energies, passionate patience and 
ardour, master intellects, were wasted in the 
long endeavour to find some means by 
which nature could be conquered and man 
made master of circumstance — all given 
fruitlessly; thrown into that bottomless pit 
of error never to be filled. And these 
earnest, misguided travellers — so bUnded 
were they — when one of their number 
turned about in the other direction promptly 
fell upon him and beat him into submission, 
as one who would check the struggle towards 
light and knowledge. Even now that the 
fact is accepted that nature is to be con- 
quered by her own natural means only, and 
that supernaturalism is a waste and quak- 
ing morass upon which no edifice of truth 
is to be reared, there are many — sadly 
many — descendants of Lot's wife casting 
132 



THE SECRET LIFE 

longing glances back to the Sodom of their 
intellectual sins. It is nothing to them that 
having once faced about in the right direc- 
tion the same amount of effort, properly 
directed, has achieved that for v^hich the 
supernaturaUsts had for ages striven in 
vain. 

Eating his due amount of food and attach- 
ing no mystical significance to anything, 
man tore his way through the heart of 
mountains, flashed his thoughts under the 
wastes of ocean, sent his voice across a 
thousand miles, sailed into the teeth of the 
wind, devoured space with steam, reared 
palaces more lofty than Aladdin dreamed 
of, and — his own Kobold — dived into 
the darkness and fetched up gold and gems 
more than the fairy tales ever knew. He 
made himself lord of the visible earth, of 
time, of distance, of wave and wind. He 
laid his hands upon all the forces which had 
awed his childhood and forced them to 
work miracles beside which the fables of 
the Kabbalists seemed tame and feeble. 
And in spite of this there remain men and 
women who are more awed by a banjo fly- 
ing through a dark room than by the tele- 

133 



THE SECRET LIFE 

phone ; who find the untying of knots in a 
cabinet, or the clutches of damp hands when 
the lights are turned down, more important 
than the automobile. It is the attitude of 
mind of a child, who is more interested by 
rabbits coming out of a conjurer's hat than 
by wireless telegraphy. 

There is as great an inequality in the 
inheritance of health as in the heirship of 
wealth or brains. Some are born with a 
fortune of vigour and soundness so large 
that not a lifetime of eager squandering 
will leave them poor, and others enter the 
world paupers of so dire a need that no 
charity of medicine will ever raise them to 
comfort; but most of us have just that 
mediocre legacy of vitality which makes 
us indistinguishable units in the mass. It 
lies in the hands of each to improve or 
waste that property as he chooses, for there 
are self-made men physically as well as 
financially, and spendthrifts of health come 
to as sorrowful an end as prodigals of gold. 
The body is a realm where a wise ruler 
brings happiness as surely as a foolish one 
ensures distress, and wisdom here, as else- 
where, Hes in the observance of natural laws. 
134 



THE SECRET LIFE 

It is just these natural laws — simple, 
severe, inexorable — against which the ma- 
jority chafe, for which some magic pill or 
potion is offered as a substitute. Tem- 
perance, cleanhness, activity, are the three 
cardinal virtues of the body, as faith, hope, 
and charity are of the soul. As tithes of 
mint, anise, and cumin are easier to render 
than the observance of law, justice, and 
judgment, so burnt-offerings of drugs are 
offered to the Goddess Hygeia in place of 
obedience to her regimen. After the ex- 
cesses of the carnival came the brief rigours 
of the Lenten retreat, and after the Fat 
Tuesday of gluttony comes the short atone- 
ment of the "Cure" at some mineral spring, 
where the priests of health are yielded a 
complete but passing submission. It is 
easier to repeat incessant formulae of prayer 
than persistently to keep one's self unspotted 
from the world, and it is easier for fat old 
sinners to paddle about barefoot in the 
dew at a Kneippe cure than to abandon at 
once and forever their little darling sins of 
greediness or indolence. One hears a con- 
stant cry of "Lo, Here!" and "Lo, There!" 
and all the world rushes to sit hopefully 

135 



THE SECRET LIFE 

under blue glass or swathe itself in pure 
wool in the ever-renewed beUef that some 
substitute may be found for the fatiguing 
necessity of obedience to the three rules. 

Even yet ill health is considered as a sort 
of supernatural visitation rather than a cer- 
tain result of the infringement of plain 
laws. I remember reading once a clever 
book, less popular than it deserved to be, 
which told of a country in the heart of the 
Andes in which the intelligent inhabitants 
looked upon crime as the unfortunate result 
of congenital temperament; a disease de- 
manding sympathy and treatment; but ill 
health aroused only condemnation as a wil- 
ful infringement of wise and well under- 
stood laws. A bronchial case caused arrest 
and imprisonment, and friends of the family 
considered it rude to cough in the presence 
of the criminal's unfortunate family; but 
a severe attack of embezzlement was cause 
of polite condolence, and cards were left 
upon the invalid with kind inquiries as to 
whether he was receiving the best moral 
attention. An idea less whimsical than it 
may seem. 

Paracelsus — who was accused of magic 
136 



THE SECRET LIFE 

because his cures were effected by such 
simple means — always asserted that if he 
were allowed to absolutely direct a child's 
diet from its birth he could build up a con- 
stitution which might without difficulty be 
made to last out a century in undiminished 
vigour; and there are those who are pre- 
pared to accept literally the age of the 
antediluvian patriarchs, on the ground that 
as at that time bread had not been dis- 
covered, digestions never called upon to 
struggle with starch found no difficulty in 
sustaining Hfe to Methuselah's term. 

It is certain that the subtle but supremely 
important chemistry of nutrition has been 
shamefully neglected in favour of matters 
far less germane to happiness, and that the 
same skill which has developed the science 
of bacteriology and pursued the most elu- 
sive microbe to his most secret lair might 
have been more profitably applied. After 
the microbe has been found and named 
his dangerousness remains unattenuated. 
How much more valuable would be a knowl- 
edge — equally attainable — of exactly the 
amount and nature of the food for the best 
results of growth and health. 



THE SECRET LIFE 

There is a farmer ant in the West Indies, 
who, in a carefully prepared soil, com- 
pounded of flowers and leaves, grows a tiny 
fungus on which he feeds. The eggs of 
this ant seem, when hatched, to produce 
creatures all alike, but through different 
feeding they develop into warriors, farmers, 
or queens, as may be needed. If through 
an accident the supply of warriors is dan- 
gerously lowered, larvae being fed with the 
meat which nourishes farmers are trans- 
ferred to the soldiers* nursery, and change 
of diet produces change of nature. 

Ah! could we too know upon what meat 
to feed our Caesars, or Roosevelts, that 
they might grow so great. What a much 
more important achievement that would 
be than the naming of microbes which 
would be impotent to injure a perfectly 
nourished body. 

To know the law, to practise it daily — 
there is the secret of the fountain of youth, 
the elixir of life. These Christian Scien- 
tists, who practise the latest abracadabra 
to conjure away the effects of fixed causes, 
who dream that pain arises from sin, and 
can be abolished by faith, childishly over- 
138 



THE SECRET LIFE 

look the fact that pain in itself is no evil, 
but rather a good. It is simply a tele- 
graphic message sent over the nerve-wires 
to the brain to inform it that some member 
of the physical commonwealth is in danger 
and requires help. 

Not by magic is health to be obtained. 
Flying carpets will not reach it. Fasts and 
prayers will not call it down from heaven. 
Fixed, immortal, the laws continue. Al- 
ways unchanged; always inexorable. The 
wages of the sin of disobedience are disease. 

July 24. 

I wonder if there is still anyone in all the 
world to whom this date is important ? 
And after all why should it be ? "Dead, 
In twenty-three years a whole Dead, 
generation has come into life; has ®* * 

wept and laughed, and loved and married, 
and produced another generation to do the 
same thing — and who remembers the roses 
that withered even yesterday ? 



Oh, wild, loud wind, 
Who, moaning, as in pain, 
Beats with wet fingers at my door in vain. 
Dost thou come from the graves with that sad cry 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Which pleads for entrance, and denied, goes by 
To faint in tears amidst the freezing rain ? 

In here the live red fire glows again. 
Of life and living we are full and fain. 
Here is no thought of death, or men that die — 
Oh, wild, loud wind! 

Why shouldst thou come then to my window pane 
To wring thy hands and weep, and sore complain 
That they alone all sad and cold must lie 
In wet, dark graves, and we breathe not a sigh ? 
We have forgot. The quick and dead are twain, 
Oh, wild, loud wind! 



September 6. 

J was reading me parts of his new 

book in manuscript to-day, and I objected 
Verbal that it lacked style. "Why, all the 
Magic. successful writers tell me that 
style is unnecessary," he said in an injured 

tone. "D says he just writes ahead 

and pays no attention to it. He says that 
the laboriousness of Stevenson and Flau- 
bert has *gone out,' and the public are 
bored by it. And just see how successful 
D is!" 

What was one to say? I merely tried 
to look convinced and begged him to con- 
tinue. And yet Emerson said that when 
140 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the distraught Hamlet cried to the mailed 
spirit of his father, 

"What may this mean, 
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel 
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon ?" 

he was so possessed by the verbal magic of 
the phrase that he could attend no more 
to the rest of the play. 

Perhaps it is some penetrating assonance 
in that "complete steel" — in those sibilant 
repetitions of "revisit'st thus the gUmpses" 
— that makes its witchery. Poe carefully 
analyzed the science of it — which is no 
science at all, but the inscrutable magic of 
inspiration. Such Hues as 

"Came up through the lair of the lion 
With love in her luminous eyes " 

are built upon that theory of liquid con- 
sonants and open vowels, and it has no 
magic at all, while "To Annie'* — which 
was written without conscious plan — is 
full of it. 

"Her grand family funerals" is in- 
stinct with that prickling delight of the 
magic of words, as is "the wizard rout" 
of the bodiless airs that blew through her 
"casement open to the night." 



THE SECRET LIFE 
Tennyson's famous alliteration, 

"The moaning of doves in immemorial elms 
And the murmur of innumerable bees" 

lacks glamour. One scents the intention. 

"Ay! Ay! oh ay! 
The wind that blows the brier" 

recaptures the elusive charm, because of 
its wild, unconscious lyrism. 

Fancy these absurd, ignorant young 
writers talking of style having "gone out"! 
Apparently they suppose it means "fine 
writing," in which nothing is more lacking 
than style. The essence of style, I suppose, 
is in the inspired, instinctive choice of 
words which present suddenly to the mind 
a picture of what the writer is talking about. 
The whole clou of Hamlet's phrase is that 
"glimpses of the moon." It makes one 
see the vague, intangible momentariness 
of the apparition. Sir Thomas Browne's 
famous "drums and tramplings of three 
conquests" gives just that flashing picture 
of the banners and rolling sounds of those 
long vanished invasions. And Keats's 

"Casements opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn " 

presents the indescribable to the eye. 
142 



THE SECRET LIFE 

There is, of course, that other element 
of musical quality, and Hamlet's phrase is 
dehcious for its strange, broken sibilations, 
but without the picture the alliterations and 
vowel sounds are but dead things. All 
the fine, rolling, organ-like sonority of 
Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine would be 
tedious without the impressions of light 
and colour that palpitate through the lines. 
For style I can think of no better modern 
example than the concluding paragraph in 
Lafcadio Hearn's paper on the dragon-fly 
in the volume called Kotto: 

"... then let me hope that the state 
to which I am destined will not be worse 
than that of a cicade or of a dragon-fly; — 
climbing the cryptomerias to clash my tiny 
cymbals in the sun, — or haunting, with 
soundless flicker of amethyst and gold, some 
holy silence of lotus pools." 

October 8. 

Old Mr. A was most interesting 

to-night at dinner on the subject of the 
various Hamlets he has seen — „ ,. 

Hamlet. 

apparently every actor of any im- 
portance who has attempted the part in the 
143 



THE SECRET LIFE 

last sixty years; not only the English-speak- 
ing ones, but German and French as well. 
After dwelling upon all manner of details 
of the varied dress, business, scenery, and 
so forth, of the different men who have 
attempted the role, I asked him which of 
them all he considered to have been the 
best, and he decided after some hesitation 
that not one of them satisfied him com- 
pletely. "Not one of them all," he con- 
cluded, "seemed to me to have a clear, 
comprehensive grasp of the essentials of 
the part. Each appeared to try to express 
some one phase of it, but you felt the thing 
as a whole escaped them." Which is, per- 
haps, not to be wondered at, since, so far, 
it appears, as a complete conception, to 
have escaped every one. No one of the 
Shakespearian scholars has expressed what 
definite meaning the play in its entirety 
conveyed to his mind. 

Mr. A — 's talk interested me immensely, 
much more than any of those long-winded 
mystical triumphs of verbiage the Germans 
perpetrate. I have seen but two eminent 
actors in the part. Booth's Hamlet was, 
of course, only a noble piece of elocution, 
144 



THE SECRET LIFE 

not an interpretation, and without vitality. 
Mounet Sully — but then all Frenchmen 
believe Hamlet mad, despite his express 
warning to Horatio — 

" How strange or odd so'er I bear myself, 
As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet 
To put an antic disposition on ... " 

And of his confidence to Guildenstern that 
he is but 

"Mad nor'-nor'-west. When the wind is southerly 
I know a hawk from a hernshaw." 

Of course, I've a theory of my own about 
Hamlet. It seems to me that the difficulty 
most persons experience in endeavouring 
to penetrate what they call "the mystery'* 
of the Prince's character arises from the 
fact that they read the play either carelessly 
or with some prepossession, to fit which 
they bend all that he says or does. The 
German critics blunder through forget- 
ting how essentially sane and unmys- 
tical was Shakespeare in every fibre of his 
mind. To him the cloudy symboHsm of 
the second part of Faust would have sounded 
very like nonsense. His interest was in 
man — the normal, typical man and ■ his 
145 



THE SECRET LIFE 

passions of hate, love, ambition, revenge, 
envy, humour. . . . 

To me the key to Hamlet seems to be a 
proper regard for the attitude of the mind 
of the seventeenth century toward the 
behef in ghosts. The EngUshman of Shake- 
speare's day hardly doubted their exist- 
ence, but was unsettled as to the nature 
and origin of spectres. Whether they were 
truly shades of the departed ones which 
they resembled, or were merely horrid 
delusions of the mind, projected upon it by 
some malign and heUish influence, they 
were not clear. 

Hamlet says: 

"The spirit that I have seen 
May be the devil : and the devil hath power 
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps, 
Out of my weakness and melancholy, 
(as he is very potent with such spirits) 
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds 
More relative than this ..." 

Personally, my method of endeavouring 
to clear vexed questions is to make an effort 
to conceive of my own emotions and actions 
in a like difficulty. To understand Hamlet 
I try to imagine what my frame of mind 

would be if P had died, suddenly and 

146 



THE SECRET LIFE 

tragically, during my absence. Hastening 
home in all the turmoil of grief and shock 
I find H has grasped all P 's for- 
tune and has promptly married M , 

whom I had expected to find as aflflicted 
as I. Naturally I would be deeply hor- 
rified and offended and greatly puzzled 
over such a situation. When one injects 
the warmth and power of one's own emo- 
tions into a situation by personifying it 
with one's own kinspeople one begins to 
realize Hamlet's condition of mind prior 
to the appearance of the Ghost. A ghostly 
visitation not being imaginable nowadays, 
one may suppose one's self having a vivid 
and circumstantial dream, making all these 
curious conditions clear by an explanation 
of hideous criminality. The hysterical dis- 
traction of Hamlet's interview with the 
Ghost seems natural enough when one 
pictures one's own horror and incredulity 
on awaking from such a vision. 

Of course, a reaction would follow the 
first red lust for denunciation and for re- 
venge of the deep damnation of the taking 
off of the helpless victim. One would be 
continually paralyzed in the very act of 

147 



THE SECRET LIFE 

vengeance by the remembrance that one 
had no better authority than a dream for 
proof of crime in those one had always 
loved and trusted. The thing would seem 
so incredible, and yet the dream would 
explain all the puzzling facts so clearly. 
To a young and noble mind, evil in those 
one loves appears impossible. One would 
be always fighting the thought — which 
pulled the very ground of confidence from 
under one's feet — and yet always laying 
traps to prove one's suspicions true, as 
the jealous notoriously do; wishing yet 
fearing to know the truth. Hamlet's vary- 
ing fits of violence and indecision seem 
natural enough under the circumstances, 
and not a sign of madness nor of eccen- 
tricity of character. He is called the " Mel- 
ancholy Dane," but to a young confiding 
heart the first revelation of the possibility 
of filth and criminality in those near in 
blood and love causes distrust of all the 
world; arouses a mad desire for escape out 
of a cruel existence where such spiritual 
squalour is possible. If one will bring the 
situation home to one's self in this way — 
vivifying it with one's own heart — Hamlet 
148 



THE SECRET LIFE 

no longer seems a strange and alien soul, 
but one's very own self caught in a web of 
horrid circumstance, and doing and being 
just what one's self would do and be in 
like case. Temptation to suicide, murder, 
"unpacking one's heart with words," bitter- 
ness to, and distrust of, the innocent Ophelia, 
treachery, doubt, indecision, — all are inevit- 
able temptations. Looked at in this way, 
there is no mystery at all in the play if one 
reads it straight and simply, and from the 
human point of view — which view was 
always Shakespeare's, I think. 

December 13. 

The R — s are home this week from 
California, and full of a surprising tale of 
their experience in renting and 
trying to live in a haunted house. 
They had no idea of its unpleasant character 
when they took it. Indeed they decided 
upon it principally because of the sunniness 
of the rooms and its generally cheerful 
character. The only suspicious feature was 
the very moderate price; but that appears 
to have aroused only gratitude instead of 
suspicion in their minds. 
149 



THE SECRET LIFE 

The sounds they heard, which finally 
drove them out of the house, were such 
commonplace ones — the clinking of medi- 
cine bottles, the mixing of stuff in saucers — 
that one hardly believes they could have 
invented them. Invention would certainly 
have conceived a more dramatic excuse for 
abandoning a house. Also, they solemnly 
aver that it was only upon their giving up 
the lease that they heard the story of the 
almost incredible tragedy of the former 
owner's death. 

There certainly must be some manifes- 
tations such as are commonly known as 
*' ghostly." I never have come across any 
personally, but the testimony is too fre- 
quent and persistent for doubt. Some phe- 
nomena have undoubtedly been observed 
of which the laws are not yet understood. 
The psychologists profess to be working 
in this direction, but the psychology of our 
day is still in about the condition of as- 
tronomy and chemistry in the days of the 
thirteenth-century astrologers and alche- 
mists — mere bhnd flounderings. We need 
a psychological Copernicus badly. I am 
convinced that what are commonly called 
150 



THE SECRET LIFE 

"superstitions" are really observed results 
of unknown causes. When I was a child the 
negroes always warned one that it brought 
bad luck to go near a stable when one had 
a cut finger. Nothing could seem more 
blindly uncorrelated, and yet it is now 
known that the germ of tetanus breeds 
only in manure, which shows that their 
observation was correct, though they had 
no conception of germs, or microbes. It 
was an old superstition, derided by the 
medical profession, that there was some 
merit in hanging red curtains at the win- 
dows of a smallpox patient; yet recently 
some interesting discoveries have been made 
as to the effect of red light upon sufferers 
from this disease. 

Again there is the old-wife's belief that 
the howling of a dog presages death. I 
saw no sense in that until I was brought 
in contact with death for the first time, and 
then discovered that a person near the end, 
and immediately afterwards, emitted a 
powerful odour, very like the smell of tube- 
roses. In two cases within my experience 
this odour remained in the death-chamber, 
despite persistent airing and cleaning, for 
151 



THE SECRET LIFE 

fully a year. My sense of smell is extremely 
acute, and no one seemed to remark this 
odour but myself, nor have I ever heard or 
seen any mention of the phenomenon being 
noticed by others; but naturally a dog, 
whose sense of smell must be a thousand 
times more acute than mine, is aware of 
this strange, half repulsive perfume, which 
has the effect upon his nerves produced also, 
apparently, by moonlight and by music. 

If fresh rose leaves are shut closely into 
a drawer until they have thoroughly dried 
and crumbled, they will be found, when 
removed, entirely scentless, but the drawer 
will retain for years some intangible emana- 
tion which they have given off, and this 
will permeate any object left in the drawer. 
Recent delicate experiments have shown 
how the violence of emotion will affect the 
weight of human beings, and no doubt, in 
supreme crises of feeling, hving bodies may 
lose this weight by the throwing off of some 
emanation which may linger for a long 
time in the immediate surroundings. It 
has been discovered that many objects 
retain luminosity, after being long exposed 
to powerful rays; a luminosity invisible 
152 



THE SECRET LIFE 

to our sight, but sufficient to make dim 
photographs upon highly sensitized plates. 
The ** ghosts" are very probably expHcable 
on some such theory as this. Some indi- 
viduals are like these extremely sensitive 
plates. The emanations thrown out in the 
condition of intense emotion affect them, 
and give them an impression of sounds or 
sights which appear, in our present state of 
ignorance, to be supernatural. Of course, 
any psychologist or scientist would pooh- 
pooh this hypothesis of mine, if it were made 
public, but equally they would have sniffed 
fifty years ago at a guess at wireless teleg- 
raphy, or the Roentgen ray, or the radio- 
activity of radium. After all, however, they 
are right in thinking that guesses are not 
very valuable unless one has the industry 
to demonstrate their accuracy. 

December 20. 

If there is any one thing more particu- 
larly repulsive to me than another it is the 
way the average clerical person Amateur 
speaks of religious things. One samts. 
would suppose that such matters, if one 
really believed them, would be the pro- 
153 



THE SECRET LIFE 

foundest sentiments of one's nature, and 
be mentioned with the reserve and rever- 
ence with which the lay person treats the 
deeper sentiments, such as love, honour, 
or patriotism. 

A little pamphlet came by mail to-day, 
which proved to be a sort of begging letter 
from a community of Protestant clergymen, 
who are undertaking to imitate monasti- 
cism in America. Under a heading of a 
cross is this text, *'If we have sown unto 
you spiritual things, is it a great matter if 
we shall reap your worldly things?'* And 
there follows an appeal for assistance in 
building a monastery on the Hudson. The 
language of this pamphlet is the usual lan- 
guage of begging letters, only with that 
flavour of smug religiosity and bland busi- 
ness-like dealing with matters of the soul 
which amazes the lay mind. 

This community of, presumably, able- 
bodied men who desire to reap of our 
worldly things naively sets forth in the 
following programme the manner in which 
they intend to occupy their time : 



5 A.M. 

5.30 to 6. 


Rise. 

Meditation in Chapel. 




154 



THE 


; SECRET LIFE 


6. 

6.50 to 8, 


Morning Prayer and Prime. 
Celebrations of the Holy Eucharist. 


8. 


Breakfast. 


9.30. 


Terce and Intercessions. 


12 M. 


Sext and None. 


12.30 P.M. 


Dinner. 


I to 1.20. 


Recreation (in common). 


4-45- 


Evensong. 


5.15 to 5.45. 

6. 

6.30 to 7.15. 


Meditation. 

Supper. 

Recreation (in common). 


8.30. 
10. 


Compline. 

Lights extinguished. 



And it is to permit them to spend their 
days in such fruitful fashion that one is 
called upon to contribute the money earned 
by men who toil! That many have already 
contributed is to be inferred from the fact 
that this community has become possessed 
of seventy-five acres of valuable land, and 
has spent some forty thousand dollars on 
the erection of a monastery. 

Of course, there are worthless idlers 
everywhere, but very few of them in our 
practical day assume their indolence as a 
merit, or call upon their neighbours to sup- 
port them, in the name of the deeper senti- 
ments of life. 

Hare, in "A Pair of Spectacles" remarks 
cynically, when asked to help an indigent 
155 



THE SECRET LIFE 

widow, **Oh, I know that indigent widow; 
she comes from Sheffield." One knows 
these sturdy beggars. They come from 
out the Middle Ages, when it was still felt 
that there was some special virtue in aban- 
doning the obvious duties of life to take up 
others more appealing to the Saint; more 
appealing precisely because they were any- 
thing but obvious. 

The very name of Saint is a stench in 
my heretical nostrils. I never knew or read 
of one who was not a vain egoist, with all 
the cruelty, obstinacy, and selfishness of 
the egoist. Read the Lives of the Saints. 
Not one of these absurd chronicles but is a 
repulsive tale of an insane vanity trampUng 
on the rights and feelings of others to 
achieve notoriety. St. Louis is a sample 
of the type: renouncing his duties to his 
unlucky wife, squabbling with every other 
monarch unfortunate enough to be asso- 
ciated with him, and wrecking the expe- 
ditions in which he joined because of some 
petty qualm about his meagre, unimpor- 
tant little soul. 

The person who extorts my reverence 
is not Saint Elizabeth, but that poor boy, 

156 



THE SECRET LIFE 

her husband, bearing the torments of her 
hysterical squeamishness with such noble 
patience and chivalry. One can picture 
that tired, sleepy young fellow, busy with 
his duties of government all day, dragged 
out of his proper slumber to behold his 
ridiculous wife climbing out of bed to lie 
on the cold floor in her nightgown, while 
the attendants stood about and crossed 
themselves in admiration. 

St. Theresa seems to have been a sort of 
Moyen-Age Hedda Gabler; no better than 
an ecclesiastic flirt. Go through the whole 
list and the story is always the same. One 
never hears of a person with a sense of 
humour — which implies a sense of pro- 
portion — setting up as a saint. The breath 
in the nostrils of these gentry is the stare of 
the unthinking multitude, who are awed 
by anything out of the ordinary. And yet 
it takes so much finer patience, so much 
greater self-abnegation, to do the plain 
duties of life. I feel far more like crossing 
myself when I look at the humble com- 
muter, who has sat on a stool all day, and 
travels with his arms full of parcels to that 
cheap, draughty cottage in the cold dusk 
157 



THE SECRET LIFE 

of Lonelyville, to listen patiently to Emily's 
recitals of Johnny's cut finger and Mary 
Ann's impudence. It is upon such as he 
that civilization and the world's happi- 
ness and sunshine depend. He has done 
a man's duties; upon him depends a help- 
less woman, and innocent children. His 
tedious, petty drudgeries rise to nobihty 
compared with the lives of these fat and 
lazy grubs with their complines and sexts 
and primes. 

St. Theresa seems vulgar to me con- 
trasted with the anxious Emily cheapening 
chops at the butcher's, and fighting around 
the bargain counter to make her laborious 
commuter's meagre salary stretch over the 
needs of her family. It requires a finer and 
sweeter, a more saintly nature to walk the 
floor patiently with a teething baby than 
to pose as a saint on the floor to no one's 
benefit but one's own. 

Ah, those humble, lovely souls bearing 
the whips and scorns of Time, and the 
spurns that patient merit of the unworthy 
takes — their commonplace daily halos 
make the saints' diadems look like imita- 
tion jewels. 

158 



THE SECRET LIFE 

January i, 1900. 

Back from the gates of the City of Life 
there runs a great highway, whose beginning 
is in the land — east of the sun and The 
west of the moon — where the Zeitgeist, 
unborn dwell. It is a broad and well- 
trodden road; beaten smooth by the feet 
of the hurrying generations that tread 
sharp upon one another's heels as they 
press forward out of grey and airless 
nothingness into the warm atmosphere of 
existence. 

By the side of this road lies a chimaera, 
with woman's breasts couched upon lion's 
paws. It is the old direful Questioner of 
Thebes; the Propounder of Riddles; the 
prodigious Asker of Enigmas. Before en- 
tering the gates of the City the jostling 
multitude must pause in their furious haste 
towards life and listen to her as she pro- 
pounds to each generation her problem. 
Every generation guesses at the riddle with 
fear or hope, with timidity or courage, as 
its nature may be, and then rushes on within 
the gates, not knowing if it has guessed 
aright, but with the task laid upon it of 
159 



THE SECRET LIFE 

living out its life by the light of that answer, 
let the result be what it will. 

The Sphinx lies watching the generations 
whirled past her into existence. She listens 
to the cries, the turmoil, the bitter plaints 
of those within the walls who believed that 
they had solved her problem a century ago, 
and as she listens she smiles her cold, in- 
credulous smile. Not yet have they divined 
her secret, if one may judge from their loud 
protests, and this new generation pouring 
in among them has but small patience with 
their failure. The newcomers are quite 
sure that they at last have answered the 
immortal conundrum correctly. They have 
found it quite easy, and they mean to show 
their silly predecessors how simple it is to 
find happiness if one has only the correct 
formula. 

All the preceding guesses have been 
wrong ? — well, but it is just because they 
were wrong that the application failed. 
Here is the right one at last, triumphantly 
evolved by the new heir of all the ages, and 
it will be soon seen how criminally, how 
almost incredibly mistaken the previous 
generations have been in their foolish 
1 60 



THE SECRET LIFE 

attempts to live by such palpably absurd 
theories of existence. 

Make way! — you silly old folk — make 
way for the young lords of life who come 
bearing truth and wisdom to the world! 
Who come to inaugurate a reign of peace 
and plenty and delight! 

The old generation, nearing the City's 
lower gate, — beyond which Hes another 
road, equally broad and well-travelled, but 
gloomier and more airless than the one by 
which they came, — shake their heads 
doubtingly at these assertions. They were 
quite as confident in their time, and yet, 
somehow, things did not work out as they 
expected. No doubt their own guess was 
quite right; they are almost sure of it; 
but many unforeseen exigencies interfered. 
People were obstinate. The formula was 
perfect, but people were so very wrong- 
headed that it never had a proper oppor- 
tunity of proving how infallible it really 
was. And so difficulties in the appUcation 
arose, and — But the young newcomers 
push them, still babbling and explaining, 
out of the further gate, and set at once 
about regenerating the unfortunate city 
i6i 



THE SECRET LIFE 

which has been forced to wait such a 
weary while for this the perfect solution of 
all problems. 

And the old Questioner lying without 
the gates stares with her long, calm eyes 
into the white mist from which yet more 
generations are to come, and she smiles 
her fixed and scornful smile. 

It was after this fashion our century, 
nineteenth of the era, came in — flushed, 
happy, confident. It came an army with 
banners, every standard blazoned in letters 
of gold with its magic device — "Liberty 
Equahty, Fraternity." 

How it hustled the poor painted, formal, 
withered, old eighteenth century out at the 
nether gate! Smashing its idols, toppHng 
over its altars, tearing down its tarnished 
hangings of royalty from the walls, and 
bundling its poor antiquated furniture of 
authority out of windows. All doors were 
flung wide; the barriers of caste, class, sex, 
religion, race, were burst open and light 
poured in. The gloomy Ghettos were 
emptied of their silent, stubborn, cringing 
population ; forged by the hammer of Chris- 
tian hate through two thousand years into 
162 



THE SECRET LIFE 

a race as keen, compact, and flexible as 
steel. The slave stood up free of bonds; 
half exultant, half frightened at the liberty 
that brought with it responsibilities heavier 
and more inexorable than the old shackles. 
Woman caught her breath and lifted up 
her arms. The old superstitious Asiatic 
curse fixed upon her by the church was 
laughed scornfully into nothingness. She 
was as free as the Roman woman again. 
Free to be proud of her sex, free to wed 
where she chose, free to claim as her own 
the child for whom she had travailed to 
give Hfe. 

A vast bonfire was made of the stake, 
the wheel, the gyve; of crowns, of orders, 
of robes of state. All wrongs were to be 
righted, all oppressions redressed; all in- 
equalities levelled, all cruelties forbidden. 
Men shuddered when they thought of the 
crimes of the past, when they talked of 
Calas. Such a crime would never be pos- 
sible in this new golden age. Only of 
oppression and cruelty was vice bred. 
Given perfect Uberty and perfect justice 
the warring world would become Arcadia 
once more. Lions if not hunted, and if 
163 



THE SECRET LIFE 

judiciously trained by the constant instill- 
ing of virtuous maxims, would acquire a 
perfect disgust for mutton, and lambs would 
consequently lie down beside them and 
would grow as courageous and self-reliant 
as wolves. 

What a beautiful time it was, those first 
thrilling days of the new era! How the 
spirit dilates in contemplating it, even now. 
The heart beat with the noble new emo- 
tions, the cheek flushed, the eyes glistened 
with sensibility's ready tear. It was so 
pleasant to be good, to be kind, to be just; 
to feel that even the bonds of nationality 
were cast aside, and that all mankind were 
brothers striving only for pre-eminence in 
virtue. It was a new chivalry, a new 
crusade. Only, instead of lovely princesses 
to be succoured, or sepulchres to be saved, 
it was the rescue of all the humble and 
suffering, a crusade against the paganism 
of the strong. The heart could hardly hold 
without delicious pain this broad flood of 
universal kindness. 

It was then that Anarcharsis Clootz 
presented to the National Assembly his 
famous ''deputation of mankind." . . . 
164 



THE SECRET LIFE 

"On the 19th evening of June, 1790, 
the sun's slant rays Ughted a spectacle 
such as our fooUsh little planet has not 
often to show. Anarcharsis Clootz enter- 
ing the august Salle de Manege with the 
human species at his heels. Swedes, Span- 
iards, Polacks, Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, 
dwellers in Mesopotamia come to claim 
place in the grand Federation, having an 
undoubted interest in it. . . . In the mean- 
time we invite them to the honours of the 
sitting, honneur de la seance. A long-flow- 
ing Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern 
solemnity, and utters articulate sounds; but 
owing to his imperfect knowledge of the 
French dialect, his words are like spilt 
water; the thought he had in him remains 
conjectural to this day. . . . To such things 
does the august National Assembly ever 
and anon cheerfully listen, suspending its 
regenerative labours." 

It was at this time the big words begin- 
ning with capitals made their appearance 
and were taken very seriously. One talked 
of the Good, the True, the Beautiful, and 
the Ideal, and felt one's bosom splendidly 
inflated by these capitalized mouthfuls. 

165 



THE SECRET LIFE 

There were other nice phrases much affected 
at the time — the ParUament of Man, the 
Federation of the World, la Repuhlique de 
Genre Humain. The new generation was 
intoxicated with its new theory of Ufe, with 
its own admirable sentiments. 

Discrepancies existed, no doubt. The 
fine theories were not always put into com- 
plete practice. While the glittering phrases 
of the Declaration of Independence were 
declaring all men free and equal, some mil- 
lion of slaves were helping to develop the 
new country with their enforced labour. 
The original owners of the soil were being 
mercilessly hunted like vermin, and the 
women of America had scarcely more legal 
claim to their property, their children, or 
to their own persons than had the negro 
slaves. Nor did the framers of the Declara- 
tion show any undue haste in setting about 
abolishing these anomalies. 

The National Assembly of France de- 
creed Uberty, equality, and fraternity to all 
men, and hurried to cut off the heads and 
confiscate the property of all those equal 
brothers who took the liberty of differing 
with them. 

i66 



THE SECRET LIFE 

But it was a poor nature that would 
boggle at a few inconsistencies, would 
quench this fresh enthusiasm with criticism. 
After all, mere facts were unimportant. 
Given the proper emotion, the lofty senti- 
ment of liberty and good-will, the rest 
would come right of itself. 

A new heaven and new earth, so it 
seemed, was to be created by this virile 
young generation who had rid themselves 
of the useless lumber of the past. The 
period was one of universal emotion, ex- 
hibiting itself in every form : in iconoclastic 
rages against wrong — rages that could only 
be exhausted by the destruction of all the 
customs, laws, and religions that had bound 
the western world for two thousand years; 
it showed itself in sanguinary furies against 
oppression — furies which could be satiated 
only by seas of blood ; in floods of sympathy 
for the weak that ofttimes swept away both 
strong and weak in one general ruin. It 
was displayed in convulsions of philan- 
thropy so violent that a man might not 
refuse the offered brotherhood and kind- 
ness save at the price of his life. The cold 
dictates of the head were ignored. The 
167 



THE SECRET LIFE 

heart was the only guide. Is it any wonder 
that driven by the wind of feeling and with 
the rudder thrown overboard the ship pur- 
sued an erratic and contradictory course. 
Seen in this way one is no longer surprised 
at the lack of consistency of the Declaration 
des Droits de V Homme, that declared "All 
men are born and continue free and equal 
in rights" — that ''Society is an association 
of men to preserve the rights of man '* — 
that ''freedom of speech is one of the most 
preciou^s rights," and yet that France, cry- 
ing aloud these fine phrases, slaughtered 
even the most silent and humble who were 
supposed to maintain secret thoughts op- 
posed to the opinions of the majority. It 
is no longer astonishing to read the gener- 
ous sentiments of our own Declaration and 
to remember the persecutions, confiscations, 
and burnings that drove thirty thousand 
of those not in sympathy with the Revolu- 
tion over the borders of the New England 
States into Canada, and hunted a multi- 
tude from the South into Spanish Louisiana. 
One is no longer amazed to hear de Tocque- 
ville declare that in no place had he found 
so little independence of thought as in this 
i68 



THE SECRET LIFE 

country during the early years of the Re- 
public. By liberty — his adored Hberty — 
the revolutionary sentimentalist meant only 
liberty to think as he himself did, and the 
whole history of man records that there is 
nothing crueller than a tender heart ungov- 
erned by a cooler head. It is in this same 
spirit that the inquisitor, yearning in noble 
anguish over souls, burns the recalcitrant. 
It is plain to him that such as are so gross 
and vicious as to refuse to fall in with his 
admirable intentions for their eternal wel- 
fare can be worthy of nothing gentler than 
fire. 

But whatever the discrepancies might be, 
the whole state of feeling was vastly more 
wholesome, more promising, than the dry 
formalism, the frivolous cynicism which it 
had annihilated and out of which it had 
been bred. The deUcate, fastidious, selfish 
formalists of the eighteenth century were 
naturally aghast at the generation to which 
they had given birth. It was as if an elderly 
dainty cat had been dehvered of a blunder- 
ing, slobbering, mastiff puppy, a beast which 
was to tear its disgusted and terrified parent 
in pieces. No doubt they asked them- 
169 



THE SECRET LIFE 

selves in horror, "When did we generate 
this wild animal that sheds ridiculous tears 
even while drinking our blood ? " Not seeing 
it was the natural child and natural reaction 
from the selfish short-sightedness of ^'Que 
ne mangent Us de la brioche?'^ from the 
frigid sneer of ^^ Apres nous le deluge.^* 

This torrent of emotionalism to which 
the nineteenth century gave itself up is 
amazing to our colder time. It manifested 
itself not only in its public policy, in its 
schemes for universal regeneration, but it 
completely saturated all the thought of the 
time, was visible in its whole attitude toward 
life. Madame Necker could not bear the 
thought of her friend Moulton's departure 
after a short visit, so that he was obliged 
to leave secretly without a farewell. She 
fainted when she learned the truth and 
says, "I gave myself up to all the bitter- 
ness of grief. The most gloomy ideas 
presented themselves to my desolate heart, 
and torrents of tears could not diminish 
the weight that seemed to suffocate me " — 
and all this about the departure of an 
amiable old gentleman from Paris to Ge- 
neva ! 

170 



THE SECRET LIFE 

They had no reserves. The most se- 
cret sentiments of the heart were openly 
discussed. Tears were always flowing. 
Nothing was too sacred for verbal expres- 
sion. They wrote out their prayers, formal 
compositions of chaste sentiments, and 
handed them about among their friends 
as ItaHan gentlemen did sonnets in the 
Quattro Cento. On anniversaries or special 
occasion they penned long epistles full of 
elegant phrases and invocations to friends 
living under the same roof, who received 
these letters next morning with the break- 
fast tray, and shed deUcious tears over them 
into their chocolate. 

"A delicate female" was a creature so 
finely constituted that the slightest shock 
caused hysterics or a swoon, and it was 
useless to hope for her recovery until the 
person guilty of the blow to her sensitive- 
ness had shed the salt moisture of repent- 
ance upon her cold and lifeless hand and 
had wildly adjured her to ''live" — after 
which her friends of the same sex, them- 
selves tremulous and much shaken by the 
mere sight of such sensibility, "recovered 
her with an exhibition of lavender-water" 
171 



THE SECRET LIFE 

or with some of those cordials which they 
all carried in their capacious pockets for 
just such exigencies. Nor did the delicate 
female monopolize all the delicacy and 
emotionalism. The Man of Feeling was 
her fitting mate, and the manly tear was as 
fluent and frequent as the drop in Beauty's 
eye. Swooning was not so much in his 
line; there was less competition, perhaps, 
for the privilege of supporting his languish- 
ing frame, but a mortal paleness was no 
stranger to his sensitive countenance, his 
features contracted in agony over the small- 
est annoyance, and he had an ominous 
fashion of rushing madly from the presence 
of the fair one in a way that left all his 
female relatives panting with apprehension, 
though long experience might have taught 
them that nothing serious ever came of it. 

Thus the Nineteenth Century entered 
upon its experiment with the verities, be- 
ginning gloriously; palpitating with gen- 
erous emotion; ready with its ** blazing 
ubiquities" to light the way to the millen- 
nium. The truth had been discovered, and 
needed but to be thoroughly applied to 
ensure perfect happiness. By 1840 the 
172 



THE SECRET LIFE 

tide of democracy and liberalism had risen 
to flood. The minority were overawed 
and dumb. To suggest doubts of the 
impeccable ideals of democracy was to 
awaken only contempt; as if one should 
dispute the theory of gravity. It was chose 
jugee. It did not admit of question. The 
experiment was in full practice and the 
new theory, having swept away all oppo- 
sition, had free play for the creation of 
Arcadias. 

Alas! Thus in the eighteenth period of 
our era had Authority cleared the ground. 
It had burned, hanged, shut up in the 
Bastille all cavillers, and just as the scheme 
had a chance to work it crumbled suddenly 
to pieces in the blood and smoke of revolu- 
tions. Democracy had no fear of tragedy 
from the very nature of its principles, but 
it had decreed liberty, and liberty began 
to be taken to doubt its conclusions. There 
began to arise voices bewailing the flesh- 
pots and the lentils of the ruined House of 
Bondage. Democracy had brought much 
good: that was not denied, but alas, what 
of the old dear things it had swept away, 
the sweet loyalties, the ties between server 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and served. The enormous social and 
political edifice reared by feudalism had 
had black dungeons, noisome cloacae, no 
doubt, but what of its rich carvings, of its 
dim, tender lights filtered through flowered 
traceries ? Where was its romance, its 
pageants and revels ? The rectangular, 
ugly, wholesome building, which democracy 
had substituted as a dwelling for the soul 
of man, with its crude, broad light flooding 
every corner, failed to satisfy many who 
forgot all the bitter inconvenience of the 
ancient castle, remembering in homesick 
longing only its ruined beauties and hoary 
charm. 

Science in its hard unsentimental fashion 
commenced to demonstrate the fallacy of 
the heart's ardent reasoning. She stripped 
the lovely veil from nature's face, and 
showed the tender springing grass of the 
fields, the flushed orchard blossoms, the 
nesting bird, the painted insect floating in 
the breeze, — all, all engaged in a ferocious 
battle for life — trampling on the weak, 
snatching the best food, always either 
devouring or devoured. It had been de- 
creed with thunderous finality that the 
174 



THE SECRET LIFE 

feeble should be by law placed on equality 
with the strong, and this was announced 
as the evident intention of beneficent na- 
ture. Science, however, relentlessly demon- 
strated that nature was not beneficent; that 
in fact she was a heartless snob, and that to 
"Nature's darhng, the Strong," she ruth- 
lessly sacrificed multitudes of the helpless. 
Democracy had made itself the champion 
of the humble, had cursed the greedy and 
powerful; science proved that the humble 
and unaggressive were doomed, as was 
proved by their not surviving in the terrible 
struggle for life that was raging in all forms 
of nature, and of which the human melee 
was but an articulate expression. The con- 
viction that humanity had once known 
perfect equality, and that freedom had been 
filched by the unscrupulous, was shown to 
be quite unfounded. Rousseau's Contrat 
Social was made absurd by Darwin's De- 
scent of Man. All research tended to prove 
that from the earliest Pliocene it was not 
the weak or the humble, but he who 

"Stole the steadiest canoe, 
Eat the quarry others slew, 
Died, and took the finest grave," 



THE SECRET LIFE 

who had founded families, developed races, 
brought order out of chaos, had made 
civilizations possible, had ordained peace 
and security, and had been the force of 
upward evolution. 

It was thus that the freedom which the 
heart had given to the head was used to 
prove how fallible that generous heart was. 

Then out of all of this groping regret, 
out of this new knowledge, there arose, with 
excursions and alarums, Carlyle; the first 
who dared frankly impeach the new theory 
and decry its results. Through all his 
vociferousness, through all his droning tau- 
tology, his buzzing, banging, and butting 
among phrases like an angry cock-chafer, 
through the general egregiousness of his 
intolerable style, there rang out clear once 
again the paeon of the strong. Here was 
no talk of the rights of man. His right as 
of old was to do his duty and walk in the 
fear of the Lord. 

... "A king or leader in all bodies of 
men there must be," he says. "Be their 
work what it may, there is one man here 
who by character, faculty, and position 
is fittest of all to do it." 
176 



THE SECRET LIFE 

For the aggregate wisdom of the multi- 
tude, to which Democracy pinned its faith, 
he had only scorn. 

. . . **To find a Parliament more and 
more the expression of the people, could, 
unless the people chanced to be wise, give 
no satisfaction. . . . But to find some sort 
of King made in the image of God, who 
could a little achieve for the people, if not 
their spoken wishes yet their dumb wants, 
and what they would at last find to be their 
instinctive will — which is a far different 
matter usually in this babbling world of 
ours" . . . thai was the thing to be de- 
sired. "He who is to be my ruler, whose 
will is higher than my will, was chosen for 
me by heaven. Neither, except in obedi- 
ence to the heaven-chosen, is freedom so 
much as conceivable." 

Here was the old doctrine of the divine 
right of the strong man to rule, come to 
hfe again, and masquerading in democratic 
garments. 

No revolution resulted. Democracy did 

not fall in ruins even at the blast of his 

stertorous trumpet, but the serious-minded 

of his day were deeply stirred by his words, 

^77 



THE SECRET LIFE 

more especially as that comfortable middle- 
class prosperity and content, to which the 
democrat pointed as the best testimony 
to the virtue of his doctrines, was being 
attacked at the same time from another 
quarter. Not only did Carlyle scornfully 
declare that this bourgeois prosperity was 
a thing unimportant, almost contemptible, 
but the proletariat — a new factor in the 
argument — began to mutter and growl that 
he had not been given his proper share in 
it, and he found it as oppressive and unjust 
as we had found the arrogant prosperity of 
the nobles intolerable. 

That old man vociferous has passed now 
to where beyond these voices there is peace, 
but the obscure mutterings of the man in 
the street, which was then but a vague un- 
dertone, has grown to an open menace. 
The Sphinx smiles as she hears once more 
the same cries, the same accusations. We 
of the middle classes, who threw off the 
yoke of the aristocracy, clamoured just such 
impeachments a century back. We are 
amazed now to hear them turned against 
ourselves. To us this seems an admirable 
world that we have made; orderly, peace- 
178 



THE SECRET LIFE 

able, prosperous. We find no fault in it. 
It has not worked out, perhaps, on as gen- 
erous lines as we had planned, but on 
the whole each man gets, we think, his 
deserts. 

We ask ourselves wonderingly if the 
aristocrat of the eighteenth century did not, 
perhaps, see his world in the same way. 
He paid no taxes, but he thought he did 
his just share of work for the body politic; 
he fought, he legislated, he administered. 
Perhaps it seemed also a good world to 
him; well arranged. Perhaps he was as 
indignant at our protests as we are at those 
of to-day. We thought ourselves intoler- 
ably oppressed by his expenditures of the 
money we earned, by his monopoly of 
place and power ; but we argue in our behalf, 
that as we pay the taxes we should decide 
upon the methods of the money's use and 
have all the consequent privileges. What, 
we ask ourselves angrily, do these mad 
creatures, who are very well treated, mean 
by their talk of slavery — of wage-slavery ? 
How can there be right or reason in their 
contention that the labourer rather than 
the capitalist should have the profit of 
179 



THE SECRET LIFE 

labour ? Does not the capitalist govern, 
administer, defend ? 

Attacked, abused, execrated, we begin 
to sympathize with those dead nobles, who 
were perhaps as honest, as well-meaning, 
as we feel ourselves to be; who were as dis- 
gusted, as scornful, as little convinced by 
our arguments as we by those who accuse 
us in our turn of being greedy, idle feeders 
upon the sweat of others. Perhaps to him 
the established order of things seemed as 
just and eternal as it does to us. We begin 
to have more comprehension of that dead 
aristocrat. 

For a hundred years now democracy has 
had a free hand for testing its faiths and 
ideals. Let us reckon up the results of 
this reign of liberty, equality, fraternity. 

Out of the triumphant bourgeoisie has 
grown a class proud and dominant as the 
nobles of old days. They have wealth, 
luxury, and power, such as those nobles 
never dreamed of. Capital is organized 
into vast, incredibly potent aggregations. 
Labour in its turn has organized for itself 
a despotism far-reaching, unescapable, 
which the old regime would never at its 
1 80 



THE SECRET LIFE 

haughtiest have ventured upon. The two 
are arrayed against one another in struggles 
of ever-increasing intensity. 

The Brotherhood of Man is still a dream. 
The continent of Europe is dominated by 
two autocratic sovereigns, who overawe 
others by the consistent and continuous 
policy only possible to a despotism. The 
repubUcs of France and of South America 
are the prey of a horde of adventurers who 
only alternate despotisms; the armaments 
of the world are so pretentious that each 
fears to wield so terrible a weapon. The 
great nations are dividing the weak among 
themselves as lions do their prey. All 
nations are exaggerating their barriers and 
differences. Russia is repudiating the 
Occidental languages and civilizations which 
she at first received so gladly. Hungary 
has abandoned the German tongue, and 
the Hungarians, Czechs, and Bohemians, 
held together by the bond of Austria, are 
restive and mutually repellent. The Celt 
revives and renews his hatred of the Saxon, 
and in Ireland and in Wales the aboriginal 
tongues and literatures are being disin- 
terred and taught as a means of destroy- 
i8i 



THE SECRET LIFE 

ing the corporate nationalism of the British 
Isles. The Bretons disclaim their part and 
interest in France. The Spanish empire 
has fallen into jealous and unsympathetic 
fragments. The Hindus are clamouring 
for an India for the Indians. All are 
rivals; envenomed, and seeking domina- 
tion. And America, — America, the su- 
preme demonstration of the democratic 
ideal, — what of her ? America has em- 
barked upon imperial wars: refuses 
sanctuary to the poor and oppressed as 
inadmissible paupers, and laughs at the 
claims to brotherhood and citizenship of any 
man with a yellow skin. 

The church, which is most opposed to 
individual liberty of thought, has been 
reconquering great territory in the very 
citadels of free conscience. One large body 
of Protestants is repudiating its protests 
against irresponsible authority, and basing 
its claims rather upon appeal to ancient 
precedent. 

Science has one by one torn in pieces 

and scattered the iridescent bubbles of 

democracy's sentimental visions. The 

Ghetto is open, but the Jews are still perse- 

182 



THE SECRET LIFE 

cuted. A Galas is no longer sacrificed to 
bigoted churchmen, but an intolerant army 
make possible the Affaire Dreyfus. Zola, 
after a century of democracy, is called upon 
once more to take up the work of Voltaire. 
Woman is still waiting for political equality 
with man. But perhaps the most surpris- 
ing result is man's change in his attitude 
towards himself. Man, who spelled him- 
self with reverent capital letters, who pic- 
tured the universe created solely for his 
needs, — who imagined a Deity flattered by 
his homage and wounded by his disrespect 
— Man, who had only to observe a respect- 
able code of morals to be received into 
eternal happiness with all the august hon- 
ours due a condescending monarch, had 
fallen to the humility of such admissions 
as these. . . . 

"What a monstrous spectre is this man, 
the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting 
alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; 
killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth 
small copies of himself; grown upon with 
hair like grass, fitted with eyes that glitter 
in his face; a thing to set children scream- 
ing; — ... Poor soul here for so little, 

■83 



THE SECRET LIFE 

cast among so many hardships filled with 
desires, so incommensurate and so incon- 
sistent; savagely surrounded, savagely de- 
scended, irremediably condemned to prey 
upon his fellow lives, . . . infinitely child- 
ish, often admirably valiant, often touch- 
ingly kind; sitting down to debate of right 
or wrong and the attributes of the Deity; 
rising up to battle for an egg or die for an 
idea. . . . To touch the heart of his mys- 
tery we find in him one thought, strange to 
the point of lunacy, the thought of duty, 
the thought of something owing to himself, 
to his neighbour, to his God; an ideal of 
decency to which he would rise if possible, 
a limit of shame, below which if it be pos- 
sible he will not stoop. . . . Not in man 
alone, but we trace it in dogs and cats which 
we know fairly well, and doubtless some 
similar point of honour sways the elephant, 
the oyster and the louse, of whom we know 
so little " — 

Alas, Poor Yorick! How a century of 
liberty has humbled him. It is thus the 
successors of Rousseau, of Chateaubriand, 
of the behevers in the perfectibility of man, 
speak — saying, calmly, "The Empire of 
184 



THE SECRET LIFE 

this world belongs to force " — and that 
"Hitherto in our judgments of men we 
have taken for our masters the oracles and 
poets, and like them we have received for 
certain truths the noble dreams of our imag- 
inations and the imperious suggestions of 
our hearts. We have bound ourselves by 
the partiality of religious divinations, and 
we have shaped our doctrines by our in- 
stincts and our vexations. . . . Science at 
last approaches with exact and penetrating 
implements . . . and in this employment 
of science, in this conception of things, there 
is a new art, a new moraUty, a new polity, 
a new religion, and it is in the present time 
our task to discover them." 

We must not forget to consider a little 
the amusing change our century has seen 
in the alteration of its heroic ideals. For 
the sentimental rubbish, the dripping ego- 
tism of a Werther, of a Manfred, in whom 
the young of their day found the most 
adequate expression of their self-conscious- 
ness, we have substituted the Stevenson 
and Kipling hero — hard-headed, silent, 
practical, scornful of abstractions, contemp- 
tuous of emotions, who has but two domi- 

185 



THE SECRET LIFE 

nant ideals, patriotism and duty; who keeps 
his pores open and his mouth shut. 

The old democratic shibboleths still re- 
main on our Hps, are still used as if they 
were truisms, but in large measure we have 
ceased to live by them, we have lost all our 
cocksureness as to their infallibility. We 
give frightened sops to our anarchical 
Cerberus. We realize that despite all we 
so proudly decreed the strong still rule and 
plunder the weak, and weak still impo- 
tently rage and imagine a vain thing of 
legislation as a means of redressing this 
endless inequality. 

Much of good we have given. How 
could an ideal so tender, so beautiful, so 
high of purpose, fail of righting a thousand 
wrongs ? 

How could those sweet, fooUsh tears fail 
to water the hard soil of life and cause a 
thousand lovely flowers of goodness and 
gentleness to bloom } That we have not 
solved the riddle of the Sphinx, that we 
have not found the secret of happiness, is 
hardly cause for wonder or shame. Neither 
will our successors find it, but it is interest- 
ing to speculate as to what clue they will 
i86 



THE SECRET LIFE 

use to guide them in the search. It is plain 
that our ideals, our formulae, are being 
cast aside as inadequate, but the new cen- 
tury is coming in with no programme as 
yet announced. It is thoughtful, silent; 
it avoids our drums and shoutings and 
vociferous over-confidence. 

What will be its Time-Spirit, since ours 
plainly will not serve ? Will the wage- 
earners shear the bourgeoisie of their privi- 
leges as we shore the nobles a century ago 
— or will liberty sell herself to authority 
again in return for protection against the 
dry hopelessness of socialism, or the tur- 
moil of anarchy ? Or will the new genera- 
tion evolve some new thought, undreamed 
of as yet — some new and happier guess at 
the great central truth at which we forever 
grasp and which forever melts and eludes ? 

February ii. 

In the midst of all these excursions and 
alarums of war, and preparation for war, a 
sudden and great silence has fallen ^j^^ 
upon the everlasting discussion Abdica- 
of the relations of the sexes. Before ^°^ °* 
the stern realities of that final and 

187 



THE SECRET LIFE 

bloody argument of Republics, as well as 
of Kings, further dissection of the Women 
Question has been deferred. The most 
vociferous of the "unquiet sex" have been 
regarding respectfully the sudden transfor- 
mation of the plain, unromantic man who 
went patiently to business every morning in 
a cable car, and sat on a stool at a desk, or 
weighed tea, or measured ribbon, into a 
hero ready to face violent annihilations 
before which even her imagination recoils. 
The grim realisms of life and death have 
made the realism of such erstwhile burn- 
ing dramas as The Doll House shrink into 
the triviality of a drama fit only for wooden 
puppets. Sudden and violent readjust- 
ments of ideas are apt to be brought about 
when human relations are jarred into their 
true place by the thunder of cannon. War 
legitimatizes man's claim to superiority. 
When the sword is drawn he is forced to 
again mount that ancient seat of rule from 
which he has only recently been evicted; 
or rather from which he has himself stepped 
down. The democracy of sex at once 
becomes ridiculous — the old feudal rela- 
tion reasserts itself. 



THE SECRET LIFE 

It is interesting to note that there has 
not been one feminine voice raised to pro- 
test against the situation. The entire sex, 
as represented in this country, has, as one 
woman, fallen simply and gladly into the 
old place of nurse, of binder of wounds, of 
soother and helpmeet. Not one has claimed 
the woman's equal right to face villainous 
saltpetre, or risk dismemberment by har- 
bour mines. 

I beheve this to be because woman prefers 
this old relation. I believe that if man were 
willing she would always maintain it; that 
it depends upon him whether she returns 
to it permanently or not. I believe that 
her modern attitude is not of her own choos- 
ing — that man has thrust that attitude 
upon her. For the oldest of all empires 
is that of man ; no royal house is so ancient 
as his. The Emperors of Japan are par- 
venus of the vulgarest modernity in com- 
parison, and the claims of long descent of 
every sovereign in Europe shrivel into 
absurdity beside the magnificent antiquity 
of this potentate. Since the very beginning 
of things, when our hairy progenitor fought 
for mastery with the megatherium, and 
189 



THE SECRET LIFE 

scratched pictorial epics upon his victim's 
bones, the House of Man has reigned and 
ruled, descending in an unbroken line from 
father to son in direct male descent. His 
legitimacy was always beyond dispute; his 
divine right to rule was not even questioned, 
and was buttressed against possible criti- 
cism not only by the universal concurrence 
of all religious and philosophic opinion, 
but by the joyful loyalty of the whole body 
of his female subjects. Moses and Zoroas- 
ter, St. Paul and Plato all bore witness to 
his supremacy, and the jury of women 
brought in a unanimous verdict in his 
favour without caUing for testimony. 

Women yet living can recall a day when 
they forgot their pain for joy that a man- 
child — heir to that famous line of kings — 
was born into the world. They can remem- 
ber a time when their own greatest claim 
to consideration rested upon the fact that 
they were capable of perpetuating the royal 
race. They recollect a period when even 
from his cradle the boy was set apart to be 
served with that special reverence reserved 
for those whose brows are bound with the 
sacred circlet of sovereignty — when a par- 
190 



THE SECRET LIFE 

ticular divinity did hedge even the meanest 
male; a tenfold essence being shed about 
all those who were of the House of Aaron. 

Why then — since all this is of so recent 
existence, since man's rule was founded 
so deep on woman's loyalty — has he been 
swelling the melancholy ranks of Kings in 
Exile ? For that he has ceased to reign 
over woman does not require even to be 
asserted. It is self-evident. 

When was this amazing revolution ef- 
fected .? Who led the emeute that thrust 
man from his throne ? It is a revolt with- 
out a history; without the record of a single 
battle. Not even a barricade can be set 
up to its credit, and yet no more important 
revolution can be found in the pages of the 
oldest chronicles. So venerable, so deep- 
rooted in the eternal verities seemed the 
authority of man over woman that the 
female mind, until the present day, never 
doubted its inevitableness. Indeed, as is 
the case with all loyal natures, she was jeal- 
ous for the absolutism of her master, and 
was quick to repair any such small omissions 
as he himself might have made in the com- 
pleteness of his domination. All of her 
191 



THE SECRET LIFE 

sex were trained from their earliest infancy 
to strive for but one end — to make them- 
selves pleasing to their rulers. Success in the 
court of man was the end and aim of their 
existence, the only path for their ambition, 
and no other courtiers ever rivalled these in 
the subtle completeness of their flattery. 
Man's despotism, of course, like all other 
tyrannies, was tempered by his weaknesses, 
but while woman wheedled and flattered 
and secretly bent him to her projects she 
did not question his real right to govern. 

Here and there through the past there 
arose a few scattered pioneers in recalci- 
trance. One of the first to deny the innate 
supremacy of the male was a woman who 
herself wore a crown. Elizabeth Tudor 
had a fashion of laying heavy hands upon 
her rightful lords whenever they displeased 
her, and she appears to have rejected the 
whole theory of feminine subordination. 
John Knox — strong in the power of the 
priest, whose sublimated prerogatives man 
had skilfully retained in his own hands — 
could and did dominate Mary Stuart even 
upon the throne, but when he blew from 
Geneva his "First Blast of the Trumpet 
192 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Against the Monstrous Regiment of Wo- 
man," and called all the ages to witness that 
the rule of a female was an affront to nature 
that trenchant lady who held the EngUsh 
sceptre forbade him ever again to set foot 
in her domains, and before he could do so, 
in his need, he had to digest a most unwhole- 
some dose of humble pie. 

Elizabeth, however, was a unique per- 
sonality and had few imitators. The litera- 
ture of her day abounds with expressions 
of supreme humility and loyalty from the 
one sex to the other. Elizabethan poets 
deigned to play at captivity and subjection 
to the overwhelming charms of Saccharissa 
and her sisters, and turned pretty phrases 
about her cruelty, but this was merely 
poetic license of expression. All serious, 
unaffected expression of conviction, such 
as was to be found in the religious writings 
of the time, and in the voluminous private 
correspondence, which gives us the most 
accurate description obtainable of the real 
actions and opinions of our ancestors, never 
suggested a doubt of man's natural and 
inalienable superiority, mental, moral, and 
physical. So undisturbed was this con- 
193 



THE SECRET LIFE 

viction, down almost to our own day, that 
the heresy of Mary Wollstonecraft gave the 
severest of shocks to her own generation. 
So heinous seemed her offence of lese-majeste 
in questioning man's divine right that one 
of the most famous of her contemporaries 
did not hesitate to stigmatize her as "a 
hyena in petticoats/' 

History gives us but one record of a gen- 
eral outbreak. In the thirteenth century 
the Crusades had so drained Europe of its 
able-bodied men that the women were 
forced to apply themselves to the abandoned 
trades and neglected professions. They 
shortly became so intoxicated by the sense 
of their own competency and power that 
when the weary wearers of the cross re- 
turned from the East they were at first 
delighted to discover that their affairs were 
prospering almost as well as ever, and then 
amazed and disgusted to find the women 
reluctant to yield up to their natural rulers 
these usurped privileges. Stern measures 
were necessary to oust them. Severe laws 
were enacted against the admission of 
women into the Guilds — the labour organi- 
zations which at that period governed all 
194 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the avenues of industrial advancement; and 
the doors of the professions were peremp- 
torily slammed in the women's faces. Such 
episodes as these, however, were detached 
and accidental. Female treason never dared 
unrebuked to hft its horrid head until 
within the present generation. 

The emancipated new woman has vari- 
ous methods of accounting for the hum- 
bling of this hoary sovereignty. Some 
find it only a natural concomitant of the 
general wreck of thrones and monarchical 
privilege — in other words, that it is but 
one phase of advancing democracy. By 
some it is supposed that in this Age of 
Interrogation man's supremacy, along with 
all other institutions, has been called upon 
to produce an adequate reason for being, 
and producing no answer that seems satis- 
factory, he has been summarily forced to 
abandon pretensions which rested merely 
upon use and wont. It is said by some 
that woman has been examining with coldly 
unprejudiced eye the claim of man to rule, 
has been measuring his powers against her 
own and has not been daunted by the com- 
parison. The more noisy declare that she 
195 



THE SECRET LIFE 

has stripped him of his royal robe and that, 
Hke Louis XIV., minus his high heels and 
towering peruke, she finds him only of 
medium stature after all; that she has 
turned the rays of a cynical democracy upon 
the mystery encompassing his Kingship and 
refuses to be awed by what she sees there; 
that it is because of this she begins to usurp 
his privileges, thrust herself into his profes- 
sions, shoulder him even from the altar, and 
brazenly seating herself on the throne beside 
him she Hfts the circlet from his brows to try 
if it be not a fit for her own head. 

The weakness of all such explanations is 
that they do not take into account the fact 
that woman is not by nature democratic. 
Whatever political principles the occasional 
or exceptional woman may profess, the 
average woman is in all her predilections 
intensely aristocratic ; — is by nature loyal, 
idealistic, an idolater and a hero worshipper. 
Strong as the spirit of democracy may be, 
it could not by itself alone in one generation 
change the nature of woman. The expla- 
nation must lie elsewhere. 

In the language of a now famous arraign- 
ment — '^J^ accuse'' man himself. 
196 



THE SECRET LIFE 

No ruler is ever really dethroned by his 
subjects. No hand but his own ever takes 
the crown from his head. No agency but 
his can wash the chrism from his brow. It 
is his own abdication that drives him from 
power — abdication of his duties, his obli- 
gations, his opportunities. Ceasing to rule, 
he ceases to reign. When he ceases to lead 
he wants for followers, and the revolt which 
casts him from power is only the outward 
manifestation of his previous abdication of 
the inward and spiritual grace of kingship. 
When man ceased to govern, woman was 
not long in throwing off the sham of sub- 
jection that remained. 

Like other subjects, woman required of 
her master two things — panem et circenses, 
— bread and circuses. When the indus- 
trial changes brought about by the intro- 
duction of machinery put an end to the old 
patriarchal system of home manufactures, 
man found it less easy to provide for his 
woman-kind — more especially his collat- 
eral woman-kind — and without any very 
manifest reluctance he turned her out into 
the world to shift for herself. Here was 
a shock to her faith and loyalty! The all- 
197 



THE SECRET LIFE 

powerful male admitted his inability to pro- 
vide for these sisters, cousins, aunts, and 
more distant kin who had looked up to him 
as the fount of existence, and had toiled 
and fed contentedly under his roof, yielding 
to him obedience as the natural provider 
and master. Woman went away sorrowful 
and — very thoughtful. 

This alone was not enough to quite 
alienate her faith, however. Woman was 
still, as always, a creature of imagination — 
dazzled by colour, by pomp, by fanfaronade. 
She was still a creature of romance, ador- 
ing the picturesque, yielding her heart to 
courage, to power, to daring and endurance 
— all the sterner virtues which she herself 
lacked. The man of the past was often 
brutal to her — overbearing always, cruel 
at times, but he fascinated her by his master- 
fulness and his splendour. She might go fine, 
but he would still be the finer bird. When 
she thought of him she was hypnotized by 
a memory of gold, a waving of purple, a 
glitter of steel, a flutter of scarlet. He 
knew that this admiration of hers for beauty 
and colour was as old as the world. From 
primordial periods the male has recognized 
198 



THE SECRET LIFE 

this need of the female. The fish in the 
sea, the reptile in the dust, the bird in the 
forest, the wild beast in the jungle are all 
aware of their mates* passion for gleaming 
scales, for glowing plumes, for dappled 
hides and orgulous crests of hair. They 
know, they have always known, that no 
king can reign without splendour. Only 
man, bent solely upon his own comfort and, 
it would seem, upon the abandonment of 
his power, deliberately sets himself against 
this need of the female, which has become 
imbedded in her nature through every suc- 
cessive step up in the scale of evolution. He 
alone fatuously prides himself on the dark, 
bifurcated simplicity of his attire, intended 
only for warmth and ease and constructed 
with a calculated avoidance of adornment. 
To avoid criticism he has set up a theory 
that a superior sort of masculinity is demon- 
strated by the dark tint and unbeautiful 
shape of garments (as if the fighting man, 
the soldier — who is nothing if not mascu- 
line — were not always a colourful creature); 
and chooses to ignore or resent woman's 
weakness for this same gold-laced comba- 
tant, and for the silken, picturesque actor. 
199 



THE SECRET LIFE 

''y accuse'* the man of abandoning his 
mastership and becoming a bourgeois in 
appearance and manner through a slothful 
desire for ease. There can hardly be a 
question that Louis le Grand's red heels 
and majestic peruke were uncomfortable 
and a bore, but his sense of humour and 
his knowledge of men were such that his 
bed curtains were never untucked until his 
lion's mane had been passed in to him on 
the end of a walking stick, and was safely 
in its place. He could imagine how unim- 
posing the King of Beasts might be in 
neglige. He knew that to be reverenced 
one must be imposing. Louis the Unfor- 
tunate found it far less tedious to abandon 
stateliness, and work wigless and leather- 
aproned at his locksmith's forge, while his 
feather-headed queen played at being a 
dairy-maid at Trianon, forgetting that the 
populace, which had submitted humbly to 
the bitter exactions of the man who dazzled 
them, seeing the bald head and leathern 
apron would get abruptly up from its knees 
and say: "What! submit to the pretensions 
of a locksmith and a dairy-maid — com- 
mon folk like ourselves — certainly not!" 
200 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and proceed to carry their sovereign's sug- 
gestion of equality to the distressingly logical 
conclusion to be found at the mouth of the 
guillotine. 

^^ J' accuse'* man of carrying further this 
democracy of sex by adding rigid plainness 
of behaviour to ugliness of appearance, for- 
getting that a woman, Uke the child and the 
savage, love pomp of manner as well as of 
garment, and that what she does not see she 
finds it hard to beheve. Every wise lover 
soon learns it is necessary to reinforce the 
tenderness of his manner by definite assur- 
ances of affection several times in every 
twenty-four hours. Then, and then only, 
is a woman sure she is loved. 

How can she believe man heroic unless 
he use the appearance and manner of the 
hero ? 

Sir Hilary of Agincourt, returning from 
France, found his lady from home, and he 
and all his weary men-at-arms sat there — 
mailed cap-a-pie — throughout the entire 
night until she returned to welcome them 
home and receive their homage. What 
if at other times Sir Hilary may have been 
something of a brute ? Lady Hilary, flat- 

201 



THE SECRET LIFE 

tered by this fine piece of steel-clad swagger, 
would, remembering it, forgive a thousand 
failures of temper or courtesy. 

When El Ahmed held the pass all through 
the darkness while his women fled across 
the desert, and his foes feared to come to hand 
grips with him, not knowing he stood there 
dead, — propped against the spear he had 
thrust into his mortal wound to hold him- 
self erect — there was no female revolt 
against the domination of men who were 
capable of deeds that so fired women's 
imaginations. 

These may, after all, seem to be frivolous 
accusations — that men do not dress well; 
do not behave dramatically; but the signifi- 
cation of these seemingly capricious charges 
Hes deeper than may appear. Man has 
been seized with a democratic ideal, and 
after applying it to poUtical institutions has 
attempted to carry it into domestic appHca- 
tion. He is relentlessly forcing a democ- 
racy of sex upon woman; industrially, 
mentally, and sentimentally. He refuses 
to gratify her imagination; he insists upon 
her development of that logical selfishness 
which underlies all democracy, and which 

202 



THE SECRET LIFE 

is foreign to her nature. Now, nature has 
inexorably laid upon woman a certain share 
of the work that must be done in the world. 
In the course of ages humanity adjusted 
itself to its shared labours by developing 
the relation of master and defender, of 
dependent and loyal vassal. Sentiment had 
adorned it with a thousand graces and 
robbed the feudal relation of most of its 
hardships. Mutual responsibilities and 
mutual duties were cheerfully accepted. 

Woman was obliged to perform certain 
duties, and these could only be made easy 
and agreeable by sentiment, by unselfish- 
ness. Man needed her ministrations as 
much as she needed his. He realized that 
sentiment was necessary to her happiness 
and he accepted the duty of preserving 
that sentiment of loyalty and admiration 
for himself which made her hard tasks 
seem easy when performed for a beloved 
master. He took upon himself that diffi- 
cult task of being a hero to a person even 
more intimate than his valet. He took the 
trouble to please woman's imagination. 

The hard democracy of to-day will take 
no note of the relation of master and de- 

20-^ 



THE SECRET LIFE 

pendent. Each individual has all the rights 
which do not come violently in contact with 
other's rights, and has no duties which are 
not regulated by the law. Unselfishness is 
not contemplated in its scheme. Every 
individual has a right to all the goods of 
life he can get. 

Women are beginning to accept these 
stern theories; beginning to apply the cruel 
logic of individualism. So far from the 
power to win his favour being her one hope 
of advancement or success, she does not 
hesitate to say on occasion that to yield to 
his affections is Hkely to hamper her in the 
race for fame or achievement. So far from 
the giving of an heir to his greatness being 
the highest possibility of her existence, she 
sometimes complains that such duties are 
an unfair demand upon her energies, which 
she wishes to devote exclusively to her own 
ends. 

The universal unpopularity of domestic 
service proves that the duties of a woman 
are in themselves neither agreeable nor 
interesting. Where is the man in all the 
world who would exchange even the most 
laborious of his occupations for his wife's 
204 



THE SECRET LIFE 

daily existence ? The only considerations 
that can permanently reconcile human be- 
ings to unattractive labours is first the senti- 
ment of loyalty — that such labours are per- 
formed for one who is loved and admired — 
and second the fine, noble old habit of sub- 
mission. These incentives to duty, these helps 
to happiness, man has taken from woman by 
weakly shuffling off his mastership. 

I accuse man of having wilfully cast 
from him the noblest crown in the world — 
of having wrongfully abdicated. War has 
at least this merit that it forces him to drop 
the vulgar careless ease of the bourgeois and 
resume for the time at least those bold and 
vigorous virtues which made him woman's 
hero and her cheerfully accepted master. 

June 13. Life. 

It is a toy: a jingling bauble gay, 
That children grasp with wondering, wide-eyed pleasure; 
Soil it with too fierce use, and find their treasure 
But rags and tinsel, which at close of day 
Falls from their weary hands. It is a page 
Whereon the child scribbles unmeaning scrawls. 
Youth's glowing pen indites sweet madrigals. 
Man tells a history, and sad old age — 
Seeing that all the space that he hath writ before 
But wrote in varying ways his folly large — 
Sets "Vanity" upon the meagre marge. 
And last Time prints "The End" and turns it o'er. 

205 



THE SECRET LIFE 

July 2. 

The Chinese pinks are in full bloom now. 
I have gathered pounds of them and 
Portable arranged them in vases, and the 
Property, mere outline of their feathery grey- 
green foliage, set with those fringed flecks 
of warm colour, makes existence seem an 
agreeable thing. The sound of children's 
voices outside, the smell of the cut grass, 
and the blue of the day, all seemed freshly 
sweet and pleasant because of the pleasure 
the freaked beauty of the bowls full of pinks 
give me. I am sorry for the people who 
don't care for flowers. The amiability they 
always awake in me is one of my most 
valued bits of secret property. That is the 
kind of possession that moth and rust can- 
not corrupt. It is safe from burglars, and 
even age does not wither one's satisfaction 
in such belongings. Most of my life I have 
been poor, as the world reckons poverty, 
but in reality I have owned more than many 
millionaires. 

It seems to me a wise thing to store up 
private wealth early. My nose to me a 
kingdom is, and emperors and any million- 
206 



THE SECRET LIFE 

aire might envy me the possession of my 
ears and eyes. There are pale-souled phi- 
losophers who declare their contempt for 
the power of gold, and some narrow dull- 
witted folk are really oppressed by luxury — 
all of which seems nonsense to me; but if 
one can't and most of us can't, have high 
stepping horses, good frocks, paid service, 
and expensive homes, one can at least own 
tangible treasures of smells and sights and 
sounds. And, ah! the odd bits of poetry I 
possess. . . . 

Now rising through the rosy wine of thought 
Bright-beaded memories sparkle at the brim 

Of the mind's chalice. Golden phrases wrought 
By the great poets bubble to its brim. 

My poets — as the patterned skies are mine, 

The perfumes and the murmurs of the sea 
Are all mine own — their cadences divine 

Seem as my goodly heritage to me. 

They trace the measures of all hidden things, 

And into worded magic can translate 
The hidden harmonies which Nature sings; 

Her mighty music inarticulate. 

And who will list hears sonorous vibrations 

As though their thoughts strung harps from earth to 
heaven 
That rung with golden, glad reverberations 

As wide-winged dreams breathed through their strings 
at even. 

207 



THE SECRET LIFE 

July io. 

P overwhelmed us last night at 

^g dinner by declaring that Ameri- 

American Can parents were selfish. We 
Parents dropped our fish-forks and stared 

Selfish? /.^ . ... 

at him in amazement and disgust. 

H said, severely, "You are a for- 
eigner." P couldn't truthfully deny 

it, and the bare statement seemed sufficient, 

but H likes to clinch any nail he drives 

and he went on : 

"It is admitted by every unprejudiced 
person — excepting, of course, the ignorant 
and benighted foreigner — that the Ameri- 
cans are the people, and that wisdom and 
virtue will necessarily die with them; that 
all their customs and institutions, whether 
social or political, are the wonder, the envy, 
and despair of other nations, which makes 
an assertion like yours seem almost frivo- 
lous." 

"Selfish!" I struck in, "selfish — indeed! 
on the contrary, the American is blamed 
as the most indulgent of parents. Surely 
selfishness is the last charge that can justly 
be made." 

208 



THE SECRET LIFE 

- tried to defend himself. He ad- 



mitted that "if indulgence invariably im- 
plied unselfishness the American would 
certainly have nothing with which to re- 
proach himself in his relations with his 
children." 

We fought the question over until late, 
and this is about what our discussion came 
to. There can be no doubt that a fond 
gentleness of rule is in this country, the law 
of the average household. So far as is com- 
patible with common sense, the children 
have entire liberty of action, and, so far as 
the means of the parents permit, the chil- 
dren are provided with every advantage and 
pleasure. Indeed, to such lengths at one 
time did fondness go that it too often degen- 
erated into a laxness that made the Ameri- 
can child a lesson and a warning to other 
nations. Daisy Miller and her little, odious 
toothless brother were supposed to typify 
the results of this fatuous feebleness of rule 
in our family life, but neither Daisy nor her 
brother can now be held to be typical pic- 
tures, though their prototypes still exist 
here and there. The American parent of 
to-day rules more firmly and with greater 
209 



THE SECRET LIFE 

wisdom. Such figures as those of the un- 
happy girl and the odious boy brought 
home to us the truth — forgotten in our 
passion for universal hberty — that a relax- 
ation of wise, strong government by the 
parent was crueky of the most far-reaching 
and irreparable sort. 

No doubt Henry James' mordant satire 
helped to inaugurate a salutary reform, 
and it is just possible that a new work of a 
similar nature is now needed to suggest 
further serious reflections to American pa- 
rents; to rouse them to consider whether 
their whole duty is performed in seeing 
their children well fed, well educated, and 
raised to man's estate. With most parents 
the sense of responsibility ceases when the 
boy begins to earn his own living, when the 
girl dons orange blossoms. Like the birds, 
the American parent works hard to feed 
the nestlings, carefully teaches them to fly, 
and then tumbles them out into the world 
to fend for themselves. So far in our his- 
tory this elemental method has worked 
well, no doubt. The result of it has been 
to breed the most precocious, self-reUant, 
vigorous, irreverent race the earth has yet 

210 



THE SECRET LIFE 

seen. One may see the whole situation 
epitomized in the orchard any pleasant June 
day — an astonished fledgling ruffling his 
feathers upon some retired bough, ruminat- 
ing upon the sudden shocks and changes of 
existence, and afraid almost to turn his head 
in the large, new, lonesome world surround- 
ing him. As the hours pass his melancholy 
reflections are pierced by hunger's pangs. 
Heretofore, a busy parent has always ap- 
peared to assuage such poignant sensations, 
but now that hard-worked person may be 
seen — genially oblivious of obligations — 
refreshing himself with cherries, and the 
fledgling, with a squawk of wounded amaze- 
ment, discovers for the first time that even 
parents are not to be depended upon. His 
hunger meantime grows. An opportune in- 
sect flits by and is snapped at involuntarily. 
It proves to be of refreshing and sustaining 
quality, and digestion brings courage. A 
hop and a flutter show the usefulness of wing 
and limb. More luck with insects demon- 
strates that the world belongs to the bold, 
and before the day is done the cocky young 
nestling of yesterday is shouldering his papa 
away from the ripest cherries. 

211 



THE SECRET LIFE 

All this is very well in a world where 
flies and cherries are free to all, but America 
is fast ceasing to be a happy uncrowded 
orchard in which the young find more than 
enough room and food for the taking. 

In the past, the boy — inured to plain 
living and a certain amount of labour from 
childhood — had only to take the girl of 
his choice by the hand and go make a home 
out of virgin soil, wheresoever chance or 
fancy led, himself and his parents both con- 
fident he could not suffer in a land where 
only industry was needed to ensure conquest. 
These boundless possibilities relieved the 
parent of half the cares incident to the 
relation, and that sense of freedom from 
responsibility has remained, while con- 
ditions have altered. The bird-Hke fashion 
of refusing further Hability once the child 
has made his first flight is still the rule. 

To the European parent this seems a most 
flagrant abandonment of duty. There the 
anxious care for the offspring reaches out 
to the third and fourth generation, and every 
safeguard which law or custom can devise 
is thrown around the child. From the 
moment of its birth the parent of Conti- 

212 



THE SECRET LIFE 

nental Europe begins to save, not only for 
the education and upbringing, but for the 
whole future existence of the child. It is 
not alone the daughter who is dowered, 
but the son also has provision made for 
his married Hfe, when, as his parents keenly 
realize, the greatest strain will be made 
upon his resources and capabilities. 

In America it is the custom — very 
nearly the universal custom — for the pa- 
rents to spend upon the luxuries and pleas- 
ures of the family life the whole income. 
The children are educated according to this 
standard of expenditure, and are accus- 
tomed to all its privileges. No thought is 
taken of the time when they must set up 
households for themselves — almost invari- 
ably upon a very different scale from the 
one to which they have been used. To the 
American parent this seems only a natural 
downfall. He remarks cheerfully that he 
himself began in a small way, and it will 
do the young people no harm to acquire a 
similar experience — forgetting that in most 
cases the children have been educated to 
a much higher standard of ease than that 
of his own early life. The parents do not 
213 



THE SECRET LIFE 

consider it obligatory to leave anything to 
their children at death. They have used 
all they could accumulate during their own 
lifetime; let their children do the same. 
The results of the system are crystallized 
in the American saying: "There are but 
three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt 
sleeves." The man who acquires wealth 
spends what he makes. His children, 
brought up in luxury, struggle unsuccess- 
fully against conditions to which they are 
unused, and the grand-children begin in 
their shirt sleeves to toil for the wealth 
dissipated by the two preceding genera- 
tions. 

Europeans frequently and curiously re- 
mark upon the American's prodigality of 
ready money. The small change which 
they part with so reluctantly the American 
flings about with a fine mediaeval profusion. 
The manner of life of the average well-to-do 
person in this country permits of it. The 
average man who earns ten or twenty 
thousand a year invests none of it. He 
installs his family in a rented house in the 
city in winter. Several servants are kept; 
the children are sent to expensive schools. 
214 



THE SECRET LIFE 

All the family dress well, eat rich food, and 
indulge in costly amusements. In summer 
they either travel abroad, Hve in a hotel at 
a watering place, or rent again. The man's 
whole income is at his disposal to spend 
every year. None of it is deducted to be 
safely stored in property. When his daugh- 
ters marry he expects their husbands to be 
solely responsible for their future, and if 
they do not succeed in marrying wealth, 
why so much the worse for them. When 
his sons begin their career he looks to them 
to be self-supporting almost from the first, 
and not to undertake the responsibilities of 
a family until they are able to bear such a 
burden without aid from him. He cannot 
assist them without materially altering his 
own scale of living, which he is naturally 
loath to do. At his death the income gen- 
erally ceases in large part, and his widow, 
and such children as may still be unplaced 
in life, are obliged to relinquish the rented 
houses and the way of life to which they 
have been used. 

To a Frenchman such an existence would 
seem as uncertain and disturbing as is gen- 
erally supposed to be that of a person who 
215 



THE SECRET LIFE 

has built upon the crust of a volcano. He 
could not contemplate with equanimity the 
thought of chaos overtaking the ordered 
existence of his family upon his demise. 
Apres nous le deluge seems to him the 
insouciance of a maniac, or of a monster 
of selfishness. Daily expenditure is regu- 
lated within a limit which permits of a con- 
stant investment of a margin. When his 
daughter marries he insures in her carefully 
guarded dower that she shall continue her 
existence on somewhat the same scale to 
which she has been accustomed, and, in 
case of premature widowhood or accident 
of fortune, she and her children shall not 
be called upon to face the desperate strait 
of absolute pennilessness. He may deny 
her in her girlhood many of the indulgences 
common to her American prototype, but 
he denies himself at the same time in saving 
to insure the security and comfort of her 
future. The French father would think it 
terrible that a tenderly nurtured daughter 
should be suddenly thrust into abject de- 
pendence upon a husband who may possibly 
abuse the power given him by that circum- 
stance, nor would he be more satisfied to 
216 



THE SECRET LIFE 

think that she should, during her first years 
of married life, while still young and en- 
countering the strain of motherhood, be 
called upon to face narrow means and a 
perilously uncertain financial condition. 

When the son arrives at maturity the 
economies to which he, in company with 
his parents, has submitted, bear fruit in 
substantial aid in beginning his career, and 
he is not obliged to put out of his mind all 
thought of marriage during his youth, since 
his parents, and those of the woman of his 
choice, have provided for this very con- 
tingency through all the years of his mi- 
nority. 

The French — with the logical inevi- 
tableness of their mode of thought — carry 
this view of life to its extreme limit, but 
throughout all Europe, including England, 
the responsibility of the parent is more 
broadly conceived than in this country, 
where the excuse for an infinity of cheap 
flimsiness is the cynical phrase, "It will last 
my time." Men build cheaply, and for- 
bear to undertake work of which they can- 
not see the immediate result, because there 
is no sense of obligation to the coming 
217 



THE SECRET LIFE 

generation. The democratic theory is that 
each man must fight for his own hand; no 
debt is owed to either ancestry or posterity. 
The mind is not shocked by sudden destruc- 
tion of families, by the sharp descent in the 
social scale, or the flinging of women into 
the arena of the struggle for hfe. The 
parent is quite willing to share with the 
child the goods of existence as far as he can 
achieve them, but he is unwilling to deny 
either child or himself that the child may 
benefit alone, or after he is gone. 

Conditions in America are constantly 
assimilating themselves more and more to 
those existing in the older countries, where 
the conflict for existence is close and in- 
tense, and where the prudent, the careful, 
and the far-sighted inevitably crowd out 
the weaker and more careless individuals 
and families. An almost unmistakable sign 
of "an old family" in America is conserv- 
atism in expenditure and modes of life. 
The newly rich, who set the pace of public 
luxury, are always amazed at the probates 
of the wills of these quiet citizens. They 
cannot believe that one who spent so little 
should have so much, not realizing that the 
218 



THE SECRET LIFE 

simplicity of life made it possible to solidly 
invest a surplus. The heirs of this solid 
wealth have been bred to prudence and 
self-denial. Such a family survives, while 
in all probability the offspring of the other 
type may in two generations be hopelessly 
trodden into the mire. 

There is in the breasts of many parents 
a half-resentful feeling that they should not 
be asked to sacrifice themselves to the new 
generation. They insist upon their own 
right to all that is to be got out of life, feeling 
that what they give to the children is never 
repaid. This selfish type forgets that in 
doing their duty they are but returning to 
their children what they themselves received 
from the past generation, and that the chil- 
dren will in turn pay to their descendants 
the inherited debt of honour with interest. 

July 30. 

I was lunching out to-day, and sat beside 

Mrs. C S . She told me her 

daughter was so hoping that the ^ 
new child would be a girl. Four Question 
boys seemed a superfluity of mas- °^ 

/. . . 1111 Heredity. 

culmity m one household. 
219 



THE SECRET LIFE 

"I wish there was some way of knowing 
beforehand about such things," she com- 
plained. 

''When F came/* I said, airily, "there 

was the same feehng in our family; we all 

wanted so that she should be a girl. H 

was so comforting. He said she certainly 
would be, if there was anything in heredity; 
her mother was a girl, and all her aunts, 
and both her grandmothers. And she did 
turn out to be a girl, you see." 

Mrs. C S looked at me with her 

mild blue eyes, and said, happily — "I 
wonder if there is really anything in that; 
for you know it's just the same in our 
family!" 

October 6. 

I have been reading in one of the maga- 
zines a record of travel in the Rocky Moun- 
^jjg tains of the Arctic regions. It is 

Little illustrated with pictures of some 

Dumb ^gj^ polar bear skins — two of 
them evidently mere babies of 
bears — a dead ram, a dead caribou — the 
former killed, the author explains, to fur- 
nish the first food he had in forty-four 

220 



THE SECRET LIFE 

hours. He concludes his article with this 
naive charge: "Wolves, when pressed by 
hunger, do not hesitate to fall upon one of 
their own number and sacrifice it to their 
beastly cravings. They are utterly lacking 
in conscience, and the young or weak of 
every class of land animals suffer from their 
wanton lack of mercy." 

Such wicked wolves! And how about 
those baby bears .? 

It is the same point of view as that of the 
Spanish bull fighters. **They are not Chris- 
tians — they have no souls — why con- 
sider them ?" 

As I have said before, very probably the 
decent, well-behaved, kindly Roman citi- 
zen of Nero's day, returning with his family 
from a pleasant afternoon at the gladiatorial 
shows, gathered his children about the 
household altar, offered pious libation to 
the gods, and went peacefully to bed with 
a clean and untroubled conscience. It was 
all simply a question of the point of view. 
A Roman citizen was certainly not going 
to be disturbed by a sense of wrong-doing 
in watching the pangs of such creatures 
as Christians or barbarians. 

221 



THE SECRET LIFE 

The theory that human beings were each 
and every one in a spiritual sense, brothers, 
came later to trouble this fine old crusted 
indifference, and now after nearly two 
thousand years the idea has so completely 
infiltrated human consciousness, that the 
death agonies of men can no longer any- 
where serve as diversion to the gentle and 
the good. But behind that sweeping as- 
sumption that we of all organic nature alone 
possess that element of immortality, bind- 
ing us together with spiritual ties, and 
laying upon all the mutual obligations of 
justice and mercy, we have been nourishing 
a towering and brutal egotism, that moves 
bhndly and stupidly about amid unreckon- 
able multitudes of sentient fellow crea- 
tures; unaware of their lives, their passions, 
or their languages. Contracted inside the 
shell of this foolish prepossession we miss 
half the interest and wonder of the world 
we inhabit, and — thinking of ourselves all 
the while as an honest and merciful fellow 
— we play an unimaginable devil to our 
unhappy neighbours. 

And yet I think even we at our worst 
would recoil could there be set before us in 

222 



THE SECRET LIFE 

plain language the immitigable horrors of 
man's place in nature written from the 
point of view of even the most philosophic 
and amiable of the beasts. It makes the 
skin upon one's flesh crisp to reflect how 
black would be that long chronicle of 
poisonings, burnings, slayings, devourings. 
Those unmentionable tortures upon the 
vivisector's table; those maimings and clip- 
pings of well-loved pets to gratify a cheerful 
but perverted fancy; the treachery, ingrati- 
tude, and fantastic despotism practised 
every day, and always — throughout the 
whole indictment set forth by the accusing 
animals, — would be seen a dark, everflow- 
ing stream of innocent blood, spilled purely 
for man's idle recreation. The fanged Nero 
of the jungle, the very Heliogabalus of the 
cobras would seem spotless saints contrasted 
with this horrid record of the deeds of 
what are commonly called kindly and up- 
right men. The beasts had never need to 
invent a devil myth. The model was 
always to their hand. 

Cardinal Newman once remarked, with 
a sense of surprise, that "we know less of 
the animals than we do of the angels," and 
223 



THE SECRET LIFE 

when one remembers the disproportionate 
attention given the two subjects this is 
hardly cause for wonder. One of the 
favourite texts of the never-ending debates 
of the schoolmen of the Middle Ages was 
the question whether sixty thousand angels 
would have room to stand on the point of a 
needle; and upon this and cognate subjects 

..." Doctor and Saint — they heard great argument 
About it, and About: and ever more 
Came out by that same door wherein they went." 

But of any study of what we call — in our 
topping human fashion — "the lower orders 
of creation" the history of the schools con- 
tains not a single record. 

Even since science has begun to divert 
the world's mind from the study of the 
macrocosm, to the contemplation of the 
microcosm this same ingrained contempt 
and misunderstanding of the animals has 
led to the most amazing ideas. Descartes, 
whose study of the reflex actions of the 
muscles curiously anticipated some of the 
subtlest discoveries made recently in Chi- 
cago by Professor Loeb, propounded the 
theory, in his "Reponses," that animals 
were mere automata — which ate without 
224 



THE SECRET LIFE 

pleasure, cried without pain, desired 
nothing, knew nothing, and only simulated 
intelligence as a bee simulates a mathe- 
matician. He says: "Among the move- 
ments that take place in us there are many 
which do not depend upon the mind at all, 
such as the beating of the heart, the diges- 
tion of food, nutrition, and respiration, 
walking, singing, and other similar actions 
when they are performed without the mind 
thinking of them. And when one, who 
falls from a height throws his hands for- 
ward to save his head, it is in virtue of no 
ratiocination that he performs this action. 
It does not depend upon his mind, but takes 
place merely because his senses being af- 
fected by present danger some change arises 
in his brain which affects the nerves in such 
a manner as is required to produce the 
motion, in the same manner as in a machine, 
and without the mind being able to hinder 
it. Now since we observe this in ourselves, 
why should we be so astonished if the light 
reflected from the body of a wolf into the 
eye of a sheep has the same force to excite 
it into the motion of flight .? " 

Why on the other hand should we refuse 
225 



THE SECRET LIFE 

to think that the hght reflected from the 
body of a Hon into the eye of Descartes 
himself should have the power of exciting 
him into the motion of flight, without his 
mind being concerned in the matter at all — 
except that Descartes himself would assure 
us with his own lips that this was not so. 

Our ignorance of the dialects of animals, 
our inability to understand the medium by 
which they convey their thoughts, makes 
it possible for men of even Descartes* 
abilities to generate such childish hypoth- 
eses. Even Huxley says blandly of ani- 
mals that ''Since they have no language 
they can have no trains of thought," 
though he admits that most of them pos- 
sess that part of the brain which we have 
every reason to suppose to be the organ of 
consciousness in man. 

It is one of the most regrettable results 
of this human egotism, which has dug so 
deep and permanent a gulf between our- 
selves and our fellow creatures, that we 
have made no concerted or intelligent effort 
to find a means of communication with our 
fellow beings. That such an effort would 
produce results worth the labour it would 
226 



THE SECRET LIFE 

entail we have reason to infer from the 
surprising success that has followed our 
struggles to elucidate the meaning of the 
fragments of language sculptured on the 
broken stones that have been left by races 
extinct for thousands of years. We know 
how great are the barriers the varying 
tongues raise between living peoples: how 
much effort must be given to acquire a 
language foreign to us, even when sur- 
rounded by the sound of it in our daily 
Hfe, and assisted by teachers, yet supreme 
human ingenuity has, from these fragments 
of broken stones, reconstructed dead tongues 
and forgotten histories of civilizations that 
for millenniums have been but dust blown 
through voiceless deserts. Yet in all the 
great lapse of ages during which man has 
been living in close intimacy with his domes- 
ticated animals not the slightest attempt has 
been made to cross the width of silence lying 
between him and his faithful companions. 

The student who makes the acquaintance 
of animals only in the trap or upon the 
vivisection table may well assert that the 
beast has 

"No language but a cry," 
227 



THE SECRET LIFE 

but those who approach their fellow beings 
with a mind divested of this self-righteous 
cant are well aware that the animals have 
means of communication as accurate as our 
own, and fully sufficient for all the needs 
of their existence. 

To an ant the man standing beside him 
is as a creature three thousand feet high, 
would be to us. Now let us imagine this 
colossal person stooping to examine the 
tiny beings hurrying to and fro in a channel 
between a row of structures built of frag- 
ments that would appear to him no bigger 
than grains of sand. He would, of course, 
be unaware that this channel was called 
Broadway, or the Strand, or the Avenue de 
I'Opera. 

**Do these tiny atoms think, reason, or 
speak.?" he would ask himself. His ear, 
of course, would be unable to catch any 
vibrations of their infinitesimal tones, but 
he would notice here and there two of them 
pausing to touch their forepaws, remain- 
ing opposite one another for some moments 
moving their minute lips, and that there- 
upon one or the other would abandon his 
travel along this channel and move off in 
228 



THE SECRET LIFE 

another direction, apparently led thereto 
by the communication of a command or 
suggestion from his companion. If this 
giant should chance to be an intelligent 
giant he would certainly infer that these 
men had a language. 

Now let us step out upon the grass any 
day in June and in our turn use an intelli- 
gent eye. Here Hes a dead grasshopper. 
A foraging ant comes wandering by. He 
surveys it carefully and estimates the horse 
power requisite to move it, and then hurries 
away in the direction of home. Meeting 
another ant he stops, touches antennae for 
a few moments, and passes on. The second 
ant makes straight for the grasshopper and 
finds it without trouble. Nothing can be 
plainer than that the first ant told the 
second one where to go. ** A glorious wind- 
fall!'* he probably said, ** There's a dead 
Leviathan about two miles from here. Keep 
straight on till you come to a three-cornered 
rock, then turn to the left and you will come 
upon three grains of sand and a straw. 
Climb the straw, and you can't miss it. It's 
big enough to be seen a mile away." The 
second ant, when it finds the grasshopper, 
229 



THE SECRET LIFE 

does not go home. It sits down and waits 
till the first one returns with a great gang 
of labourers, and then every one seizes hold 
of a leg or wing and the stupendous mass 
is slowly removed to the nest. Would any 
person with ordinary common-sense sup- 
pose these to be automata ? 

Had Huxley pondered the Scriptures and 
gone to the ant to consider her ways he 
would have certainly been cured of his 
haughty illusions, for not only has each 
species of ant a language in which he can 
communicate with other ants of the same 
species, but each nest or clan has, clearly, 
its own brogue; for an ant knows instantly 
whether another belongs to its own nest or 
not. The ants of one nest murder those 
of another. It is a point of honour with 
them. 

We have seen that Huxley admits reluc- 
tantly that most animals have those por- 
tions of brain development that we believe 
to be the seat of consciousness, but here is 
an insect with organs and functions as 
heterogeneous from our own as can well be 
imagined, and yet there is no mode of life 
that men have tried which one or another 
230 



THE SECRET LIFE 

of the races of ants is not pursuing to-day. 
Beside the agricuhurists and herdsmen, 
some keep slaves to do everything for them, 
some live by hunting and plunder, while 
others quarter themselves upon us and live 
by confounding meum and tuum. Any 
ardent pomologist may study the herdsmen 
tribes by simply turning over the leaves of 
his young apple tree in the spring. Upon 
the broad succulent meadows of the under 
side of his foliage he will discover fat flocks 
of aphis cows, tended by brawny ant cow- 
herds, who keep a special eye upon the big 
brown bulls around which the cows and 
calves gather to feed. The herdsmen con- 
duct them from leaf to leaf as they exhaust 
the sap, and at night by the long twig paths 
and barky roads they carry the milk of the 
sweet honey dew with which they are swol- 
len. If the horticulturist be hard of heart 
and smear away a whole herd with a 
sweep of his thumb, the horrified herdsmen 
will rush frantically home, bursting into the 
nest to report to some hyksos king of the 
termites, that the Philistines have fallen 
upon his charge and that "I, only I, have 
escaped to tell the tale!" 
231 



THE SECRET LIFE 

The most interesting of the agricultural 
races of ants is that one commonly known 
in the West Indies as the parasol ant, from 
its fashion of carrying bits of flower petals 
over its shoulder at the angle commonly 
used with a sunshade. This ant erects an 
enormous structure, as large in proportion 
to its size as is the City of London to any 
one of its inhabitants. The dwellers in 
these cities are divided into classes: farmers, 
road-makers, explorers, nurses, soldiers, 
street sweepers, policemen, and, of course, 
the Queen. The great town is kept per- 
fectly clean and sanitary by the scavengers, 
who remove all refuse every day. In case 
of death the bodies are removed some dis- 
tance and buried. The soldiers guard the 
entrances to the city, and in case of attack 
by one of the Attila hordes of the barbarian 
hunter ants, they fight with a fury and 
courage so great that only after the entire 
army is destroyed is the city ever given up 
to pillage. 

The explorers belonging to the nest scour 
the surrounding country in search of the 
material needed by the farmers, and follow- 
ing their indications, the road-makers clear 
232 



THE SECRET LIFE 

paths a quarter of an inch in width and 
frequently a mile in length, through the 
immense tangles of the tropical forests, — 
roads as straight and useful as those of the 
Romans. Along these the farmers pass, 
often at the end of it to climb a tree fifty 
feet high in search of the bits of flower 
petals, with which they pass so continuously 
to the nest that the human observer will 
sometimes see what appears to be a thin 
trickle of pink or yellow through the jungle 
grass as far as the eye can reach. These 
flower petals are packed in the city's cellars, 
moistened, and sown with the spores of a 
minute fungus upon which the ants live. 

Most curious of all is that these ants also 
keep pets — several varieties of tiny insects 
which they feed and protect, and which 
apparently serve no purpose save to give 
pleasure by their playful gambols. In every 
well estabhshed city of the parasol ants there 
resides a small green snake in a chamber 
built about him by the ants themselves, 
who feed and guard him, and when by any 
accident the little reptile is removed they 
abandon all their affairs until another is 
found to replace him. Unless this snake 

^^3 



THE SECRET LIFE 

serves them as a fetish or deity there is no 
means of accounting for their desire for his 
presence, for as far as can be discovered 
he fills no purpose of utility. Mark Twain 
declares that the ants "vote, keep drilled 
armies, hold slaves and dispute about re- 
ligion," and for all we know this little snake 
may be the centre of a complex system of 
theology. 

Consider too Maeterlinck's "Life of the 
Bee," that remarkable study of a civiliza- 
tion so unlike our own. It is common to 
dismiss the bee's geometrical abilities with 
the futile word instinct^ but honest students 
of the work of these astonishing insects 
have shown that, given a new situation to 
deal with, they first hold active counsel to- 
gether concerning it, and then adapt their 
means to new conditions with all the skill 
and flexibility that suggest powers of trained 
reasoning. Here is a race that works for 
an ideal. The general good of the hive 
inspires in them as inflexible a severity, as 
ardent an abandonment of the desires of 
the individual as did the Roman patriotism 
of the elder Brutus, or of the young Scae- 
vola. No more remarkable story is to be 
234 



THE SECRET LIFE 

found in literature than Maeterlinck's de- 
scription of the nuptial flight of the Queen 
Bee. Choosing a warm and perfect day 
in the very prime of the season's glow, dis- 
tilling as she goes some intoxicating aroma 

— impalpable to our grosser senses — a 
perfume of love that drives every drone of 
the hives in passionate ardour to that deadly 
encounter, to which only he may obtain 
who can follow her arrowy course into the 
blue, where, out of sight of our feeble eyes, 
that one lethal embrace occurs after which 
the lover comes hurtling from the skies, 
dead and eviscerated. To provide this 
lover, whose potent tenderness shall ensure 
a myriad generation — this lover with 
greater wing flight than any of his fellows 

— with countless facetted eyes, with greater 
body and stronger Umbs, this creature of 
such passion as to sacrifice his life for one 
moment of joy — the unflagging life work 
of not less than five of the sexless workers 
must be given, and hundreds of drones are 
raised each year that among them one may 
prove strong enough to attain to that dizzy 
aerial love. 

Beside the stern, homogeneous, self-sac- 

235 



THE SECRET LIFE 

rificing civilization of the bees that of even 
the Japanese shows but clumsy, disordered 
and inadequate. 

Many of the doings of these small brothers 
of ours seem incomprehensible and un- 
reasonable to us, but imagine that three 
thousand foot giant looking down upon 
the mites in France and Germany in 1870 
without an inkling as to the Spanish succes- 
sion; upon the recent incredible scufflings 
and passagings back and forth over the 
veldts of South Africa without being in- 
structed as to the term of residence required 
to obtain the franchise. To his ignorant 
eye how purposeless, how amazingly futile 
the whole affair would have seemed. And 
it is thus we move, stupid and contemptuous, 
amid great races and events, heavily indif- 
ferent to their meaning, to their significance 
to ourselves. We walk surrounded by 
powers whose forces we ignore, who work 
out their ends independent of us, yet against 
whom we are sometimes forced to battle 
mightily for existence. To the unreflecting 
man in the street the cinch bug seems a 
matter of small interest. No one inter- 
views the coddling moth to inquire his 
236 



THE SECRET LIFE 

intentions. War correspondents pass by 
the locust and ignore the cotton worm; the 
fly weevil and the ox bot seem to such an 
one but a feeble folk, yet every year in the 
United States alone these small races cost 
us more than three hundred and fifty mil- 
lions of dollars, destroy one tenth of our 
agricultural wealth, and are more expensive 
to us than was the yearly cost of the Boer 
war to England. 

We are the victims of pigmy captains of 
pernicious industries, beside whose gigantic 
operations such magnates as Carnegie or 
Mr. Morgan look — in the language of the 
streets — hke thirty cents. 

Darwin discovered that human and plant 
life would perish from the face of the earth 
were it not for the labours of that humble 
annelid, commonly known as the angle 
worm, through whose body the entire super- 
ficial soil of the globe passes periodically, 
and by whose digestive processes it is made 
amenable for agriculture. The termites 
subserve the angle worm's efforts by turn- 
ing over and aerating the soil to an extent 
very nearly incredible to those who have 
given no attention to their industry. Our 
'^11 



THE SECRET LIFE 

very existence is made possible by the 
myriad beings for whom our bodies serve 
as homes and battlefields, and whose di- 
mensions are so minute as to be invisible 
save under the most powerful microscopes. 
Ferocious struggles take place within our 
own tissues between the germs of disease 
and the white corpuscles of the blood, those 
brave and sleepless warriors who patrol our 
veins, and who die by thousands with unre- 
flecting courage in combats with malignant 
bacteria. When their ranks are thinned, 
their columns crushed, we succumb help- 
lessly to our invisible foes. 

How many of the great and good have 
fallen victims to those BrinvilUers of the 
swamps — the anopheles mosquitoes ? And 
a greater number of the young flower of 
the armies of America and England were 
slaughtered by the enteric germs carried 
by flies than fell victims to Boer or Spanish 
bullets. 

How little have we regarded the fly, 
and yet the facts about this little brother 
stagger the imagination! It is said to be 
certain that he came to this country in the 
Mayflower; but compare his conquests and 
238 



THE SECRET LIFE 

fertility with that of the Pilgrims. Linnaeus 
said that three flies and the generations 
that could spring from them could eat a 
dead horse more rapidly than could a lion, 
but later knowledge shows that, barring 
mortality, the number of flies resulting 
from one female in a summer would be 
something like seven hundred sextillions, 
and would in mere bulk outweigh every 
man, woman, and child on earth. Happily 
the fly has enemies. 

In speaking of these smaller races an 
idea of their relations to us can only be 
conveyed by figures; with the larger forms 
of life the individual may be studied as a 
type of the race. 

We, secure in a conviction of a unique 
value through the immortality we claim, 
broadly stigmatize our living fellows as of 
"the lower orders of Hfe." They are differ- 
ent, it is true, but in what respect lower? 
Their development is as commensurate 
with their needs as is ours. The shib- 
boleth of the Socialists — "To each accord- 
ing to his needs, from each according to his 
abilities," has plainly been the rule with 
nature. Whatever we boast of achieving 

239 



THE SECRET LIFE 

has been accomplished as well or better by 
these lower orders when their necessities 
have demanded it. Even the Japanese 
create inferior paper to that made by the 
wasps, who number among the species the 
most skilled of carpenters and masons. 
Who can spin or weave as can the arachnce 
and their cognate families ? The beautiful 
manufactures of the mollusks — even of the 
diatoms, invisible save with the microscope 
— leave us beggared of admiration and 
envy. 

If it be a question of physical qualities 
let us compare the eye of the eagle, or of a 
fly, with our own — pit our dull sense of 
smell with the subtle olfactories of a dog 
or a wolf — or let one of us test our sense 
of hearing against that of a mouse or a 
robin. The albatross loafs in indolent 
circles about the swiftest of our turbine 
ships; the porpoise can pass from point to 
point in his dense element with greater 
speed than that of our swiftest express 
engine. The wild goose can do his eighty 
miles an hour for ten hours without rest. 
Scare up little Molly Cottontail from your 
path, and as she flies through the autumn 
240 



THE SECRET LIFE 

grasses like a light leaf blown before the 
wind, her delicate and harmonious play 
of muscular powers leaves our most skilled 
athletes but clumsy cripples by comparison. 

In sight, smell, hearing, speed, strength, 
grace, and endurance we are immeasurably 
the inferiors of our dumb brothers. And 
turning from the material to the spiritual 
and the ideal, we find that in industry, 
courage, patriotism, loyalty, fidelity, friend- 
ship, chivalry, maternal love, and racial 
solidity the lower orders have nothing to 
learn from us. Indeed some races we find 
advanced in moral progress in certain 
directions far beyond our most hopeful 
endeavours. 

The needs and laws of their being have 
developed their morals in differing degree, 
and the virtues of individuals vary as greatly 
as among ourselves. Of the characters and 
ideals of wild creatures we can snatch but 
brief and tantalizing glimpses; from the 
larger domestic animals our daily life is 
too removed to make intimacy possible, but 
dogs and cats, the free birds, and our caged 
pets — if considered with a seeing eye — 
open a door through which we can learn 
241 



THE SECRET LIFE 

much, though our indolence and stupidity 
still shut us off from the free community of 
speech. 

Carlyle says: "No nobler feeling than 
that of admiration for one higher than him- 
self dwells in the breast of man. It is at 
this hour, and at all hours the unifying 
influence in man's Ufe. Religion, I find, 
stands upon it . . . what, therefore, is 
loyalty proper, the life breath of all society, 
but an effluence of hero worship; submissive 
admiration for the truly great! Society is 
founded upon hero worship." 

Lockhart in his Life of Scot tells of a little 
pig who conceived a passion of admiration 
and affection for Scott which much embar- 
rassed the great story teller. This suscep- 
tible little porker would lurk about, waiting 
for Scott's appearance, squealing with joy 
when he came, and trotting patiently all 
day at his heels through miles of wander- 
ing, proud and contented at merely being 
allowed to attend on Scott. What was this 
but Carlyle's hero worship. It is not by the 
way recorded that any pig ever made a hero 
of Carlyle. I once had the pleasure of 
knowing a goose who abandoned his kind for 
242 



THE SECRET LIFE 

just such a human friendship, and the same 
love of the admirable is mutual among the 
animals themselves. A small green paro- 
quet, who lived in the freedom of a bird 
fancier's room with a canary, was possessed 
of a passionate admiration for his more 
gifted companion. His every waking mo- 
ment was spent in the most touching efforts 
to imitate the thrilling songs and graceful 
airiness of his more gifted friend, in no way 
discouraged by the contumely with which 
the yellow tenor treated his lumberingly 
pathetic failures. But there is no more 
confirmed hero worshipper than your dog. 
Stevenson says of a dog whom he knew and 
loved: "It was no sinecure to be Coolin's 
idol. He was exacting like a rigid parent; 
and at every sign of levity in the man whom 
he respected he announced loudly the death 
of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars 
of the earth." And, he adds, "for every 
station the dog has an ideal to which the 
master — under pain of derogation — will 
do wisely to conform. How often has not 
a cold glance informed me that my dog 
was disappointed, and how much more 
gladly would he not have taken a beating 
243 



THE SECRET LIFE 

than to be thus wounded in the seat of 
piety." 

"Because of all animals the dog is our 
nearest intimate we know more of his ideals 
and of his moral traits than of those of the 
other races. We know that he is vainer 
than man, singularly greedy of notice, 
singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious 
like the deaf, jealous to the degree of 
frenzy." 

To quote Stevenson again: "To the 
dog of gentlemanly feeling theft and false- 
hood are disgraceful vices. The canine 
like the human gentleman, demands in his 
misdemeanours Montaigne's *je ne sais quoi 
de genereux!' He is never more than half 
ashamed of having barked or bitten, and 
for those faults into which he has been led 
by a desire to shine before a lady of his 
race, he retains, even under physical cor- 
rection, a share of pride. But to be caught 
lying, if he understands it, instantly uncurls 
his fleece." "Among dull observers the 
dog has been credited with modesty. It is 
amazing how the use of language blunts 
the faculties of man. That because vain 
glory finds no vent in words, creatures sup- 
244 



THE SECRET LIFE 

plied with eyes have been unable to detect 
a fault so gross and obvious is amazing. 
If a small spoiled dog were to be endowed 
with speech he would prate interminably 
and still about himself. In a year's time 
he would have gone far to weary out our 
love. Hans Christian Andersen, as we be- 
hold him in his startling memoirs — thrill- 
ing from top to toe with excruciating vanity 

— scouting the streets for cause of offence 

— here was your talking dog.'* 

While an egregious, incurable snob the 
dog is yet the very flower of chivalry. The 
beggar maid of his kind is sure of as dis- 
tinguished a consideration from him as is 
the queen of his race. Indeed he carries 
his gallantry to so exquisite a point of quix- 
otism that even a female wolf is safe from 
his teeth. Gratitude is the keynote of his 
character; to its claims he will subdue even 
his innate snobbishness, and his devotion 
to the mysterious laws of his canine etiquette 
amount to slavishness. "In the elaborate 
and conscious manners of the dog, moral 
opinions and the love of the ideal stand 
confessed. To follow for ten minutes in 
the street some swaggering canine cavalier 
245 



THE SECRET LIFE 

is to receive a lesson in dramatic art and 
the cultured conduct of the body; and in 
every act and gesture you see him true to a 
refined conception. For to be a high-man- 
nered and high-minded gentleman, careless, 
affable, and gay, is the inborn pretension of 
the dog." 

Of all persons now living I personally 
should most prefer to be enabled to con- 
verse freely with that high-bred, subtle- 
natured lady who follows me in my walks, 
who shares my meals and lies beside my fire. 
She has learned with ease to understand 
my speech, but I, in my gross sluggish- 
ness, have neglected to acquire her tongue, 
and yet how different a place this dull world 
would appear could I learn all she might tell 
me. What sights, sounds, and odours, 
what significances escaping my dull senses, 
might become open to me! A thousand 
times I have been aware of her pitying 
impatience of my slow-wittedness in matters 
so obvious to her keener intelligence. A 
whole world lies outside of my apprehen- 
sion with which she is familiar, and all my 
Hfe I shall suffer unappeased curiosity as to 
how she becomes aware of approaching 
246 



THE SECRET LIFE 

changes in the weather; why a certain part 
of the wood is taboo. What is it that warns 
her of a death in my family ? Why does a 
certain good and gentle woman fill her with 
loathing distrust, and what was the peculiar 
refinement of insult she received in her 
puppyhood from the family butcher, which 
has made it possible for her daily for six 
years to detect the sound of the butcher's 
wheels among many others while he is still 
not in sight, and daily produces in her a 
rage of resentment that no punishment, no 
offer of tidbits, has ever been able to allay ? 

All these things I shall never know. She 
shares my life, but I, regretfully, protest- 
ingly, must stand almost wholly outside of 
hers. 

When we at last seriously take up the 
great task of articulate communication with 
the animals, a new world will swim into our 
ken beside which the discovery of America 
will seem but an unimportant event. Half 
of the unexplained puzzles of science will 
be solved with ease, and whole departments 
of knowledge as yet undreamed of will be 
opened to our astonished understandings. 

Perhaps by our little dumb brothers we 
247 



THE SECRET LIFE 

are still compassionately reckoned as the 
deaf and blind giant. 

August 5. 

A thousand times the great clock's heart has beat — 

A thousand, thousand times, Fever. 

And ever at the hours the sudden, sweet, Dreams. 

Low, unexpected ringing of the chimes 

Tells how the night doth slowly pass away. 

The hissing snow fell through the air all day, 

But with the dark did cease — 

I hear the shivers of the frozen trees. 

The night-lamp's gleam — though weak the flame and small — 

Casts shadows giant tall 

That to the ceiling crawl — 

The cap-frill of the sleeping nurse doth fall 

And nod this way and that against the wall. 

Quiet the great dark house, and deeply sleep they all — 

They held me fast, they could not hear the call 

That I heard always — chill the winds did blow — 

The skies were dark — the ways were white with snow — 

He did not call — I wandered to think so. 

But now they sleep, I will arise and go. 

They think him dead, but his sweet voice I know. 

I stretch my hands, my heart beats hard — his voice is sweet 

and low, 
But muffled by the weight of earth, and hath a note of woe — 
He calls to me: I cannot stay; I must arise and go — 
I step out on the floor — 
(How loud that nurse doth snore) 
But I softly close the door. 
I quickly pass from the outer door. 
It is very, very cold! — 
But he will me closely fold 
With a tender clasping arm. 
And still my deep alarm — 

248 



THE SECRET LIFE 

On his heart I shall be warm! 

The snow is smooth as glass. 

I scarcely leave a foot-print as I pass — 

It is very cold, and the way is long, alas! 

And they have buried him deep, so deep under the frozen 

grass. 
It was cruel to bury him so deep; 
He was not dead, he was only asleep — 
He was not dead; it makes me weep 
To think he is in this frozen ground — 
Why does the moon whirl round and round! 
My head is dizzy; I'm faint and ill — 
Will no one make the moon stand still .'' 
The foolish moon whirls round and round — 
What is it that the pine trees know. 
That they rustle and whisper together so ? 
Someone was buried under the snow 
More than a thousand years ago! — 
My long black shadow runs by my side. 
Was it I, or my love that died 
And was buried deeply under the snow 
So many hundred years ago ? 
Oh! how can I reach him under the ground ? 
I am burning with fire, my head turns round. 
He does not call me, I hear no sound — 
Ah! — will no one come to me .'' I'm all alone, 
The muse does not hear, she's as deaf as a stone, 
The walls of the grave together have grown. 
The dead man lies still and makes no moan. 
They have left me here with this corpse alone — ! 
His golden hair is tarnished with rust; 
His eyes have withered and fallen to dust — 
His subtle, secret, amber eyes; 
The worms might have spared those amber eyes — 
His lips are grey with dust and sunken; 
His heart is cold, and his cheeks are shrunken — 
He must be dead, so still he lies! 

****** 

249 



THE SECRET LIFE 

I lay in my bed and he called to me, 
They held me, but it might not be 
That we should rest so far apart, 
And we have lain here, heart to heart, 
Since I came out across the snow 
More than a thousand years ago. 

September 7. 

Mary R was telling us to-day the 

details of Zola's accidental death — if it 
AMisun- was an accident. There are a 
derstood few, shc tells me, who whisper pri- 
Morahst. y^tely that the enemies he made 
by **Lourdes" and "Rome*' are of the sort 
who wait long and patiently, and strike 
hard, and strike at the back when the time 
of vengeance comes. That sounds rather 
sensational, and certainly the general public 
have heard no such suggestion. 

The story of the death-chamber is like 
a chapter from one of his own books, and 
one can't but feel how gruesome and vivid 
he would have made the account of the 
tragedy could he have recorded it. 

It's rather odd how the multitude still 
judge Zola at the rating of twenty years 
since, before he had developed the meaning 
of his methods and proved himself one of 
the greatest of the moral teachers. 
250 



THE SECRET LIFE 

It was certainly as long ago as that when 
a battered, grimy copy of "Nana" drifted 
by some swirl of chance into my youthful 
hands. I was quite old enough to reahze 
that my pastors and masters would be con- 
vulsed with horror did they at all suspect 
what I was at, but being in those days as 
omnivorous as Lamb — *' Shaftesbury was 
not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild 
too low" — everything on which a hand 
could be laid passed into my greedy mental 
maw, from Locke "On the Human Under- 
standing" to the novels of the Duchess, 
and I had intelligence enough not to chat- 
ter about every book I opened. 

I remember with perfect vividness the 
moral revelation given me by the chapter 
descriptive of the drunken orgie in Nana's 
rooms, where they wound up the gaieties 
of the evening by the spirited jest of pouring 
the champagne into the piano. In a flash 
was made clear to me what I had never 
previously suspected, that vice was tedious 
and unamusing! 

Until that moment I had accepted in 
perfect good faith the insistence of the 
moralists upon the delicious, exciting, irre- 
251 



THE SECRET LIFE 

sistible nature of vice, which, though de- 
plorable in its eventual effects, was too 
agreeable to be refrained from unless forti- 
fied by either religion or the choicest col- 
lection of moral maxims. 

We were the contented owners, at that 
same period, of a large engraving of a popu- 
lar painting entitled *'The Prodigal Son''; 
one of those pictures supposed to have a 
"good moral" and help silently, in season 
and out of season, to point towards virtue 
like a sign at the crossroads. The engrav- 
ing was divided into three parts, like a 
triptych; the central, and by far the largest 
portion, showed the famous ne'er-do-weel 
prodigalling with all his might in a sort of 
lordly pleasure dome, all columns and 
sweeping curtains and steps, open to the 
sunshine on every side, and decorated with 
the most expensive cut flowers. A meal, 
which plainly deserved to be called by no 
meaner name than a banquet, was toward, 
and the naughty young gentleman, bedecked 
in velvet and soothed by the music of viols, 
was feasting amid a medley of young ladies 
of the most dazzling physical charms, all 
attired in those sketchy toilets which have 
252 



THE SECRET LIFE 

no visible means of support, and which 
allow the artist to prove his inexhaustible tal- 
ent for drawing arms and busts. So viva- 
cious and sumptuous was this scene that at 
first one hardly noticed the narrow panels 
to right and left, in one of which the profuse 
prodigal was on a subsequent occasion 
dining en famille with the swine, and later 
journeying toward forgiveness and veal. 

The moraHsts, from Isaiah down, have 
so dearly loved to show their talent for 
drawing arms and busts. The delineation 
of vice always usurps all the foreground of 
the canvas. According to them, the broad 
road is unfailing in its crops of flowers, the 
wine is always red in the cup, "with beaded 
bubbles winking at the brim." The frisky 
enchantresses are without exception young 
and charming. The reverse of the picture 
is depressingly bleak — by way of proper 
dramatic contrast, perhaps, though to any 
one less austere than a moralist it would 
seem unintelligent to point out that in one 
direction all was gay, brilliant, and agree- 
able, yet one must follow the gloomy, 
tedious, and unpleasant road in order to 
find some intangible spiritual satisfaction, 

253 



THE SECRET LIFE 

which to youthful and ardent minds seems 
drearily remote, and unsatisfying when 
reached. Besides it really isn't true. Life 
as a matter of fact is certainly more agree- 
able when one behaves one's self decently. 
Nothing was ever more blatantly untrue 
than the cynical proverb which declares 
that everything pleasant is either indiges- 
tible, expensive, or immoral. But the mind 
of youth is almost touchingly credulous. 
It rarely questions the accuracy of the de- 
scriptions of the moralists, who claim to be 
experts, though instinctively it develops a 
necessity for experimenting a little with 
those forbidden sweets of which it has heard 
so much praise. 

Until I read " Nana " it never occurred to 
me to question that vice was in itself agree- 
able, since I had never heard aught to the 
contrary; but that champagne poured into 
the piano washed away the conviction 
forever. It seemed so squalid, so unimagi- 
native, so dull; and all the vice I have 
observed since has shared its lack of charm. 
I found that the broad road had no patent 
on flowers and sunshine, that dishonesty 
nine times out of ten failed of returns at all 
254 



THE SECRET LIFE 

commensurate with the energy devoted to 
it; that loose behaviour was nearly always 
noisome and fatiguing; that the prodigal, 
instead of being a beautiful young person 
in velvet, generally had a red nose and a 
waist, and borrowed from his acquaintances, 
and that the enchantresses had not nearly 
as good figures as the painters credited 
them with, and as a rule had no real feeling 
for soap and water. The truth is that all 
forms of vice are for the most part not only 
repulsive but intolerably unamusing, and 
Zola was the first of the moralists who had 
the courage to be original and speak dis- 
respectfully of it. 

September io. 

A man who took me in to dinner Wednes- 
day night said, pityingly, 

"You seem to be a pessimist, ^j^^ 
Why is that ? Are you unhappy ? " Pleasures 

That sort of remark is a shot be- ^^ 

• Pcssixuisiu 

tween wmd and water, and leaves 

one speechless. I crossly denied being an 

ist of any sort, and changed the subject. 

Possibly he was led to his banal person- 
ality by some remark I had made, of the 
255 



THE SECRET LIFE 

sort that is commonly called cynical be- 
cause it is true. 

The optimists have a theory that those 
who don't take the same view of life as 
themselves must therefore be unhappy. 
It's an amazing conclusion. They seem 
to have no idea how the pessimists enjoy 
their own sense of superiority. It is as if 
the blind should say to the man with eyes: 
"How unhappy you must be to see things 
just as they are. Now I can imagine them 
to be anything I please ! " 

The man with eyes could, of course, only 
smile; it being obviously impossible to dis- 
cuss such a proposition. 

The believers in personal immortality 
labour under the same curious illusion 
apparently. They are so sorry for those 
who don't believe in it, and imagine them 
frightened at the thought of death. To 
their minds the universe is inconceivable 
without their presence, seemingly forgetful 
of the fact that it got on quite well before 
they came. It is rather an imposing bit of 
egotism, after all. It rises to the level of 
grandeur. 

Catholics, I know, have the same pity 
256 



THE SECRET LIFE 

and astonishment about the state of mind 
of Protestants that the optimists feel for 
pessimists, the religious for the unbelieving. 
Each thinks the heretic in parlous state and 
fancies he must be secretly disturbed by it, 
when of a truth the heretic is simply amused 
by this anxiety for his welfare, and cheer- 
fully certain of his own superiority. 

September i8. 

M , who has, with some flourish of 

trumpet and tuck of drum, gone over to 
Rome, is the daughter of a Presby- Moral 
terian minister, I am told, and, what Pauperism, 
is odder still, is a very clever and humorous 
creature. One can discount the parson and 
the cleverness, but a humorous Protestant 
'verting is more difficult to understand. 

I tried hard to get some explanation from 
her as to her point of view, but she was 
entirely vague. Fancy — she has a patron 
saint, beads, etc.! One can only gape. 

Very probably every one is at birth — 
no matter what the environment — either 
Catholic or Protestant by nature. To many 
it is an absolute necessity that someone else 
should furnish their spiritual and mental 
257 



THE SECRET LIFE 

support. With these, no matter how fre- 
quently one sets them on their feet their 
knees will give under them; no matter how 
often one starts them in spiritual business 
one has eventually to come again to the 
rescue. To such an one the perpetual 
supervision and personal tyranny of the 
CathoHc Church must seem deUciously 
comfortable and protecting. No wonder 
they are drawn to it across all barriers. 

To the born Protestant such bondage is as 
intolerable as spoon feeding and a wheeled 
chair would be to an athlete. Whatever the 
moral or mental situation may be he must deal 
with it for himself — must stand on his own 
feet — use his own moral muscles. Neither 
can ever understand the other. Their whole 
attitude toward hfe is directly opposed. 
Each seeks what his nature demands. 

September 30. 

The book-club has eliminated Marcel 
Prevost's **Mariage de JuHanne" as too 
On a Cer- naughty for our perusal — though 
tain Lack j^^^ ^j^^jj ^^ ^i^^ all read it, to see 

of Humour i • i i • 

in French- how Undesirable it was. 

men. fo what H calls my 

258 



THE SECRET LIFE 

** robust nature" it seemed merely deli- 
ciously funny and human, and I am not 
fond of French fiction as a rule. Most of it 
leaves in my mind only a sense of dreary 
nastiness — a sort of more closely knit Hall 
Caine-ism, with his sloppiness of style left 
out. Yet a good many of one*s contem- 
poraries profess to find French fiction vastly 
superior to English literature of the same 
sort: to find Balzac a greater artist than 
Thackeray; but those who make this asser- 
tion are, I find, generally lacking in humour 
and imagination themselves, and therefore 
blind to a whole side of life. They, of 
nature, think marionettes liker life than 
beings of flesh and blood. Balzac's dry, 
minute descriptions give them an impression 
of reality. To hear that a man had a red 
nose, had iron-grey hair growing thin on top, 
and that his bottle-green trousers wrinkled 
at the knees, gives them the sensation that 
Balzac is presenting them with "a slice of 
life" — not being aware, it would seem, that 
this might be equally truthful a description 
of a wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. 
Such matters as these are not the essentials 
that diff^erentiate a man from his fellows. 
259 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Henry James thinks this elaboration of 
detail is Balzac's ** strongest gift" and adds, 
"Dickens often sets a figure before us with 
extraordinary vividness, but the outline is 
fantastic and arbitrary — we but half believe 
in it." It seems to me that James has, like 
Balzac, but a half developed sense of life. 
He too is metriculous in his efforts to make 
one see and feel what he wishes to convey, 
because he only half feels and sees it him- 
self; though he is concerned rather with emo- 
tions than objects, and in spite of the labour 
and care expended by each, but a shadowy 
impression remains. Dickens can dash in 
a few broad, half caricatured lines of a por- 
trait because the figure he wishes to show 
is so vivid to his own eye he feels it only 
necessary to indicate it broadly to make 
others recognize it. Uncle Pumblechook in 
"Great Expectations" is suggested, as far 
as written description goes, in merest outline 
— "A large, hard-breathing, middle-aged, 
slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull 
staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright 
on his head" — yet after half a page of his 
conversation and his welcome to Pip at the 
funeral, "breathing sherry and crumbs," 
260 



THE SECRET LIFE 

one needs no more. The man lives and 
moves. One knows him inside and out. 

James speaks again of Balzac's ** choking 
one with his bricks and mortar," and thinks 
his houses, his rooms, his towns, ''un- 
equalled for vividness of presentation, of 
realization." To an imaginative reader 
they are as dry and superfluous as a real- 
estate agent's pamphlets; one has a sense 
of the author's heavy straining effort to 
make the places palpable to his own mental 
vision. It is the weary iteration of the 
bore, who having no imagination can leave 
nothing to that of his hearer. 

Dickens somewhere describes a room 
merely by telling how the winking fire was 
reflected in every smooth object. The fire 
winks cheerily; the pewters winking dully, 
as if afraid of being suspected of not seeing 
the joke; the furniture twinkling slyly from 
every poUshed point, etc., etc., in Dickens's 
well-known fashion of pursuing a happy 
fancy round and round. There is not one 
word of catalogue of the room's contents, 
yet it remains forever as vivid in the reader's 
memory as a chamber with which one is 
intimately familiar. 

261 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Bulwer says that ''French nature is not 
human nature," and if human nature was 
necessarily the Anglo-Saxon conception of 
life it would be true. Nothing so points 
French heterogeneousness from ourselves 
as the attitude of our two chosen masters 
of the novel, Balzac and Thackeray. Not 
a gleam of humour ever irradiates for a 
moment the pages of the former. A mere 
glimmer would make impossible his story 
of the young man who endeavours to com- 
promise a pretty woman, whose refusal to 
yield to his dishonourable suggestions so 
puzzles and disgusts him that he can only 
explain her coldness as being the probable 
results of some secret but mortal disease! 
... A lover abducts a reluctant fair by 
mingled force and stratagem, and attempts 
to brand her with hot irons; accompanying 
this gentle gallantry with the mummeries 
of a thirteenth-century Inquisition. This 
picturesque proof of devotion so touches 
the lady that she promptly grovels in an 
agony of affection for this chivalrous ad- 
mirer. . . . 

All this is told with perfect gravity, the 
author having not the smallest suspicion of 
262 



THE SECRET LIFE 

its absurdity — and yet there be actually 
Anglo-Saxons who solemnly announce that 
Balzac knew human nature to its depths. 
French nature, perhaps; certainly not 
ours. . . . 

A spinster lives twenty years in a family, 
all of whose members she venomously 
hates, and not one of them suspect her un- 
selfish devotion until she aids in humihat- 
ing them and wrecking their fortunes . . . 
Madame Hulot is a saint, and yet at fifty 
years of age offers her person to a repulsive 
scoundrel in order to provide a marriage 
portion for her daughter; Balzac evidently 
considering this one of her noblest acts. 

The point at which one finds the widest 
divergence of the French and English atti- 
tudes toward life is in the essay made by 
each of these chosen spokesmen to show us 
the adventuress. Taine, who honestly tried 
to see English Hterature from English eyes 
and interpret it to his countrymen, breaks 
down entirely when he reaches this angle 
of vision. 

He says: "There is a personage unani- 
mously recognized as Thackeray's master- 
piece, Becky Sharp. . . . Let us compare 
263 



THE SECRET LIFE 

her with a similar personage of Balzac in 
*Les Parents Pauvre,' Valerie Marneff. 
The difference in the two works will exhibit 
the difference in the two literatures" — 
and they do indeed. 

Valerie to the English reader is the old 
commonplace, stereotyped adventuress of the 
melodrama. One can imagine none save 
those as vile and stupid as herself being 
deceived by such a greedy, outrageous crea- 
ture. The descriptions of her looks and 
behaviour smack of the unhumorous shil- 
ling shocker. She gives glances from be- 
neath "her long eyelids like the glare of 
cannon seen through smoke!" . . . and 
again "her eyes flashed like daggers." 

Such figures of speech sound Hke the 
pompous rhodomontade of a Laura Jean 
Libby, yet Taine quotes them with much 
admiration. 

Becky, Taine finds incomprehensible. 
He complains that Thackeray "degrades 
her" when he laughingly reveals her secret 
vulgar shifts. Also he is resentful because 
her carefully built schemes crumble one by 
one like houses of cards, being ignorant, 
apparently, of that choice old utilitarian 
264 



THE SECRET LIFE 

proverb as to Honesty being the best policy, 
founded upon a very general observation 
that the same cleverness and energy em- 
ployed by adventurers in their nefarious 
schemes pays a far higher rate of interest 
when turned to legitimate pursuits. 

The half affectionate, half contemptuous 
humour with which her creator regards 
Becky shocks Taine. With his French 
passion for logical completeness he cannot 
comprehend that Thackeray's vision for 
truth should make him capable of admitting 
and admiring that arch-adventuress's good 
qualities, — the very qualities of her defects 
which made her career of deception possible. 
The consistent monster Valerie could delude 
no one, while Becky's patience, gaiety, and 
good nature made Rawdon Crawley's devo- 
tion plausible, and forced even Lord Steyne, 
who recognized her baseness, after a fashion 
to respect and like her, and consent to be 
used by her, until — by a fundamental 
impulse of womanliness — " she admired her 
husband standing there, grand, brave, vic- 
torious," above the prostrate body of her 
seducer. It is that same underlying woman- 
liness in Becky — of which Valerie lacked 
265 



THE SECRET LIFE 

even an intimation — which makes her 
human and real. Its absence leaves Valerie 
incredible and shadowy. 

Take again Lear and Goriot. The 
latter's children have no excuse whatever 
for their crimes of greed and selfishness. 
They are grotesque succubi, while the as- 
tounding wickedness of Regan and Goneril 
is made credible by Lear's own violent 
foolishness and vanity. His tempestuous 
senility is of the sort that wakes the blindest 
revolt of youth, which is always restless 
under the dominance of age, a restlessness 
Hkely to deepen to cruelty when age is 
unrestrained by wisdom or dignity. 

A Frenchman once complained to me 
bitterly of the comic porter in Macbeth, 
who comes grumbling to unlock the gate so 
soon after the horror of the murder of 
Duncan. To him the touch of comedy 
seemed vulgar and inept. It was impossible 
to make him understand how to the Anglo- 
Saxon mind this veracious touch of comedy 
jostling tragedy but heightened the dra- 
matic poignancy of the play. This inca- 
pacity to see the humorous contrasts of 
life and character is generally characteristic 
266 



THE SECRET LIFE 

of youth with its narrow inexperience of 
realities, and the French and the unhumor- 
ous of our own race seem never to outgrow 
this juvenihty. 

October 15. 

I wonder if anyone will ever muster up 
sufficient courage to write the true his- 
tory of the ferocious egotism en- xhe 
gendered in the human heart by a Value 
belief in human immortality. The ° ^ ^^' 
most cynical might well shrink from the 
sorrowful task. Self-preservation, sup- 
posedly the first law of nature, is but a 
feeble instinct when placed in comparison, 
for motherhood, patriotism, sexual love; 
a thousand minor passions will induce hu- 
man beings to abandon their inheritance 
in the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
but all that a man hath, and all that his 
friends, and the wife of his bosom, and the 
children of his loins have, will he give for 
that wretched little flyspecked object he 
calls his soul. 

Buckle rather shocked a pious world 
when he announced that in many cases the 
best kings, considered from the point of 
267 



THE SECRET LIFE 

view of their private characters, made the 
worst rulers ; but all history is loud with 
this truth. The moment anyone in power 
began to consider the question of his soul 
with seriousness, tears and blood soon began 
to flow. A ruler who had strong secular 
tendencies usually had some sort of con- 
sideration for human happiness, but one 
who turned his mind to what was called 
"higher things" waded through the wretch- 
edness of those in his power with noble 
insouciance. Henri IV., who was cheer- 
fully indifferent as to whether he heard 
preaching by parsons or the mass of priests, 
provided he might have Paris for his capital, 
quieted the fratricidal religious conflicts of 
France and made life happy for his subjects; 
and Henry II. of England, who was the 
only one of the Angevin Kings entirely 
unconcerned about his immortal future, did 
more for England than any ruler since 
Alfred, and would have trebled those wise 
secular benefits had a-Becket and the rest 
of the troublesome clergy permitted it. 

I have been roused to these moral 
generalizations by Quiller-Couch's novel, 
"Hetty Wesley." It's a poignant book. 
268 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Hetty was the sister of the founders of 
Methodism, and Quiller-Couch has availed 
himself, in writing the book, of the letters 
and papers of that remarkable family. He 
has told his tale very simply and with an 
artist's comprehension and sympathy, set- 
ting down nothing in maUce and leaving 
the reader to draw his own inferences. 

The picture of that damp Epworth Rec- 
tory where Charles and John were born 
(two out of the ten hving children, 
several others had died early) makes 
the Bronte Parsonage, over which it is the 
fashion to shiver, seem like an amiable 
idyl by contrast. Samuel Wesley, the father, 
was passionately religious. The first of 
his concerns was the saving of his own 
soul for immortal happiness, the second 
was the saving of as many other like heirs 
to bliss as possible, and a part of this second 
ambition impHed the training of his sons 
for the ministry. In pursuit of these ends 
he sacrificed the comfort and happiness of 
his wife and seven lovely daughters with 
a ruthless persistency and consistency that 
would be incredible did we not have his own 
complacent writings in testimony thereto. 
269 



THE SECRET LIFE 

The sons found his example worthy of 
imitation, it appears. Of late, apropos of the 
Wesley Centennial, one has heard much of 
John Wesley, of his tangled love affairs and 
his amazing marriage, and one can't but 
be conscious of a secret liking for that 
tempestuous termagant, Mrs. John, because 
that she after a fashion avenged those eight 
unlucky kinswomen whose lives he so com- 
placently sucked dry to nourish his religious 
aspirations. 

One has wondered, when reading them, 
if those meek and loyal addresses from the 
scaffold, made to Henry VHI. by the inno- 
cent victims of his bloodthirstiness, could 
have been genuine documents. They con- 
tradict all one knows of human nature in 
their humble acquiescence and submissive 
affection; but here in this book we have 
Hetty Wesley's own tender appeal to her 
father — a father who had ruthlessly cast 
her into a lifelong hell — to forgive what 
he called a sin, really only a girl's generous 
foolish mistake, and we have also his answer. 
An answer which would have made even Tu- 
dor Henry blush for its cruelty. One could 
almost wish that there was somewhere an 
270 



THE SECRET LIFE 

immortal part of Samuel Wesley, burning 
eternally in the knowledge of himself as he 
really was. Mrs. John Wesley saves us the 
need of wishing that Hetty's brother had a 
soul. 

After all, this is but one of thousands of 
grim stories of human beings trampling 
upon the lives and hearts of their fellows 
in the endeavour to achieve for themselves 
an infinity of bUss. To my heretical mind 
such behaviour for such an end seems inex- 
pressibly sordid, vulgar, and selfish. I at 
least prefer to be one with the dumb beasts 
that perish, but who pass away knowing 
that no creature has ever suffered a pang 
in order that they may have saved their 
souls alive. 

Time is not long enough for me A Grateful 
To hate mine enemy perfectly, Spaniard. 

But God is of infinite mercy and he 
To Time has added Eternity. 

October i6. 

I reproached J last night for send- 
ing me to dinner with E . "This is 

the third time you have done it," 
I grumbled, "and it is just twice 
too often. None of the other women will 
271 



THE SECRET LIFE 

talk to him, and because I treat him de- 
cently you take advantage of my good 
nature." 

"Oh, but my dear," she countered imp- 
ishly, **you know you are so juicy with 
bores!" 

Of course, that was true, though there is 
nothing I envy more than the courage of 
ruthlessness — one of the first laws of social 
self-preservation. I am always the helpless 
prey of bores. They drink as they choose 
from my "sacred fount," though it is shallow 
enough, heaven knows ! for me to need all its 
contents for myself. If this condition of 
affairs arose from good nature I should not 
be ashamed of it, but it is all sheer coward- 
liness. My imagination is so vivid that I 
can feel the corroding humiliation of neglect 
and indifference to the poor souls as if it 
were being applied to my own skin, and I 
labour on, crying protests inwardly, rather 
than free myself by a moment of brutality. 

"Tell bores who waste my time and 
me" that the best hours of my life have 
been burned in their dull fires. Again and 
again have I lost my opportunity to seek 
the friendship of some adorably amusing 
272 



THE SECRET LIFE 

creature while sweating to pull the oar that 
was the bore's own proper task. 

This indolent cowardice enfeebles me in 
a dozen ways; makes it impossible for me 
to train my dogs for fear of hurting their 
feelings, and to discharge a servant costs 
me a white night and a fausse digestion. 
It is not kindliness, it is only that I feel their 
discomfort more than they do themselves. 

November 7. 

H told a curious story last night of 

the bobstay on his yacht, which time after 
time rusted, broke, and betrayed E^otiong 
him at critical moments of racing, and 
Replacing with the best material Oxydiza- 
and by the best workmen was 
futile, though all the rest of the wire rigging 
remained intact. It seemed a "hoodoo" 
until it was discovered to be due to oxydiza- 
tion from a bolt which touched a copper 

plate on the stem. F said it was easy 

to see how, before the chemical action of 
steel and copper were understood, the most 
sensible and logical mind might be driven 
to attribute such a thing to witchcraft, and 
it occurred to me that perhaps when we 
'^7Z 



THE SECRET LIFE 

know more of the chemistry of psychology, 
many of our emotional puzzles will be more 
easily solved. Jealousy, anger, suspicion, 
ingratitude, it will then be easy to correct 
by some simple act of insulation. We know 
that many evil moral tendencies are caused 
by pressure upon certain portions of the 
brain, and my own personal experience and 
long observation makes me confident that 
half the baser passions are due to acidity in 
the blood. It makes one slow to indulge 
one's emotions when one realizes they may 
simply be the result of a lack of a therapeutic 
alkali. With such a conviction one will 
generally wait for the slower and more 
balanced action of reason. 

What a great alteration would take place 
in the history of the world if it could be 
rewritten from the point of view of what 
the doctors describe as "the gouty acid 
diathesis." 

Bess of Hardwicke's marital troubles, 
which convulsed all England, and even 
drew Elizabeth and Burleigh into the tur- 
moil, were due entirely to the unhappy 
Earl's gout, as no one can doubt after read- 
ing his letters. Charles V. was driven from 
274 



THE SECRET LIFE 

his throne by it, and Napoleon's gout lost 
him the battle of Leipsic and set his feet 
in "slippery places." Henry VIII. 's shoes 
were not slashed without reason, and Pitt 
was lost to England when she most needed 
him by the same agent. These are but a 
few of the notorious examples, but how 
many wars, revolutions, massacres, had 
their origin in that same corroding oxydiza- 
tion of the spirit of man we will probably 
never fully determine. 

November io. 

Dear Sister in Christ: Abelard 

God send you peace from Heaven! to Heloise. 

I would that to your restless heart 
His blessed peace was given, 
And that you found 
In contemplation of His love 
Balm for that wound 
That ever frets you sore. 
'Twere meet you wore 
Much sack cloth, 

And with scourge and fasting drove 
This passion from your soul . . . 
Christ's Bride thou art; 
Therefore give Him the whole. 
I charge thou keep'st back not any part 
Of His just due to spend upon a worm . . . 
Nay, woman! would'st thou bring on me a curse 
For that I stand between thy soul and God ? . . . 
Thy love for me is but a thing perverse. 
Cast it forth from thee, or a heavy rod 



THE SECRET LIFE 

May prove that God is still a jealous God. 

But that you are a woman, and infirm 

Of will and purpose, I should say 

Some bitter words to purge you of this sin! 

Natheless each day 

I painful penance do 

For that 'twas I who led you first astray — 

(For which great sin may He my soul assoil!) 

And wrestle mightily each night in prayer 

That Christ may yet your stubborn heart subdue 

To His sweet will, and — the sharp fret and coil 

Of earth cast forth — He then may enter in 

To find a garnished chamber, and an altar fair . . . 

— Nay, now, bethink you! 

Love like yours is grievous sin. 

And the time wasteth swift toward death. 

All love is but a breath 

Which clouds the glass that we see darkly through — 

When you to Heaven shall win 

And there see face to face your risen Lord, 

Wilt know 'twas but the hot fume of a word 

Spake by a devil, dimmed your earthly glass . . . 

In essence love is sin! — 

Save only love of God. 

It is a gin. 

Set by the Evil One to snare the feet 

Of those who haste toward Heaven, 

By its false likeness to the spiritual love, 

And by it man is driven 

Down the steep slope to Hell. 

'Tis thus when sanctioned by the Church; how then 

Of love like thine, which is accursed of men. 

And doubly cursed by God ? . . . 

Last night in dreams I trod 

Up the long windings of the heavenly stair. 

And heard the angels singing loud and sweet. 

And neared the gate, when sudden both my feet 

Were caught amid the tangles of thy hair, — 

276 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Spread like a cruel web across my path, — 

In which I struggled, mad with woe and wrath, 

And could not free me; so at last I fell, 

Stumbling and plunging down to blackest Hell, 

Wherein I cursed the hour I saw thy face, 

And most I cursed the hour, the day, the place 

When thou didst give me love . . . 

Waking then, I strove 

For holier thoughts, and could at last forgive 

The wrong thou didst me. 

But no more, I prithee, vex me with thy tale 

Of love. It wearieth me, and henceforth I must live 

In larger peace, or I may not prevail 

Within the Schools 

Against the babbling of the narrow fools 

Who blindly are withstanding my new light 

Upon the Divine Essence's nature, and my clasp 

Of the ringed Trinitarian mysteries. Matters your slight 

Woman's comprehension may not grasp . . . 

Farewell. Neglect not prayer. 

My good Lord Abbot: — But this once HeloisiB 

I speak, and then no more. to Abelard. 

I must not 'gainst the lore 

Of the great Schools 

Set my weak cries 

For warmth and life and love. 

The snow now lies 

Deep round the Paraclete, 

Where from my pale nuns rise 

In never ceasing chant of nones and primes 

Incense of prayers to ease the need of God 

For broken contrite hearts and dropping tears. 

And sometimes I have fears 

That each one wears 

'Neath her long habit 

As sad a heart as mine. 

For in their eyes, 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Which each unto the skies 

Lifts many times each day, 

I see desire for love, 

A gift they pray 

From God, since man gives not 

That which they need. 

I watch them from my carven chair, 

While lingering on a bead. 

And add, beneath my hood. 

Beads to my rosary of tears 

To think how good 

To each 'twould seem to change 

This Latin drone and censer's clank 

For the dear homely noise 

Around the hearth 

Of little girls and boys — 

For all these weary prayers 

The daily household cares 

For some tired labourer 

Who earned their bread. 

Oh, little hands and feet! — 

There is no room 

Within this cloistered tomb 

Wherein we worship God, 

For one dear curly head. 

***** 

Sometimes at prayers 

A vision seems to rise — 

Borne on an air 

Mayhap that blows from Hell. 

And then I see the great Lord Jove 

And all His mighty peers 

Who ruled so many years 

Above the ancient heavens, 

Dwindle, and fade, and pass away. 

And only Love remains — 

I see the doctors of the ancient schools, 

278 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Great Egypt's sages, those who made the rules 

Of wisdom in the Academe, 

Fade also like a dream; 

All their wise thoughts grow foolishness 

And all their learning turns to dust, 

And only Love remains 

Forever young, forever wise and great, 

And in the time to come 

I see the same strong fate 

Seize on our Mighty God 

Who binds us in his chains, 

And makes our love a sin 

To drive our souls to Hell, 

He too, with all his doctors 

Fades — and only Love remains 

Forever and forever. Fare you well. 

November 30. 

The Japanese possess a delightful word 
— Yumei Mujitsu — which signifies ** Hav- 
ing - the - Name - but - not-the -Real- Yumei 
ity/' They use it to express cer- Mujitsu. 
tain assumptions — such, for example, as the 
claim of the Mikado's descent from the 
Sun Goddess, which, like the formulae of 
Algebra, achieve desired results though 
they recognize that in itself it has no exist- 
ence. How valuable such a word would 
be to express the attitude of the Sentiment- 
alist regarding a coloured man named 
Booker Washington, much discussed of late. 

Now if there is one creature more than 
279 



THE SECRET LIFE 

a saint whom I fear and distrust it is the 
Sentimentalist, whom Hawthorne pungently 
characterizes as "that steel machine of the 
Devil's own make." The ruthless heart- 
lessness of the Sentimentalist would be 
unbelievable if one had not seen it with one*s 
own eyes. Take, for example, the Abo- 
litionists. To gratify their own emotions 
they caused the death of a million men, the 
infliction of wounds and pain that make the 
imagination shudder, and all that long suc- 
ceeding anguish of a people — the grief, 
the poverty, humiliation, and despair that 
burned itself indelibly upon the hearts of 
those who shared it. 

Stevenson — that misunderstood moral- 
ist now chiefly remembered as a story 
teller! — put his finger upon the enigma of 
the SentimentaUst's cruelty: 

"Everywhere some virtue cherished 
or affected, everywhere some decency of 
thought or carriage, everywhere the ensign 
of man's ineff^ectual goodness: — Ah, if I 
could show you these! if I could show you 
these men and women all the world over 
. . . clinging in the brothel and on the 
scaffold to some rag of honour, the poor 
280 



THE SECRET LIFE 

jewel of their souls! . . . They may seek 
to escape and yet they cannot . . . they 
are condemned to some nobility, all their 
lives the desire of good is at their heels, the 
implacable hunter. ... To touch the heart 
of his mystery we find in him the thought 
of something owing to himself, to his neigh- 
bour, to his God." 

The Sentimentalist, along with all his 
kind, is hunted by that implacable need of 
virtue. To satisfy it he seizes upon the 
wrongs done by others, and in his hot de- 
nunciation of another's sin, in his clamour 
for its punishment, he experiences the warm 
ennobling glow of personal merit. 

The pietist will meticulously perform 
rites and ceremonies in this same need 
to soothe the imperious call within him 
for some justification of his life. Having 
washed and bowed and recited, his sins 
of practice trouble him but little — those 
genuflections have made his balance good 
in the book of virtue. But the Sentimental- 
ist cannot content himself with pale cere- 
monies. He is by instinct devouring and 
bloody, but his soul cringes before his in- 
ward monitor. By fierce denunciation of 
281 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the sins he has no mind to he can soothe his 
desire to inflict pain in perfect content, up- 
borne by a consciousness of his own right- 
eousness. Torquemada was a type, John 
Brown of Ossawatamie another; both were 
criminal paranoics tortured by desire for 
blood and for self-justification. Real good- 
ness does not stimulate the Sentimentalist's 
emotions — it gives no opportunity for the 
outcries that warm his heart with a con- 
sciousness of rectitude. 

The Boer war was a great opportunity 
for the American Sentimentalist. Protest- 
ing against the suppression of a Republic, 
he could forget his own suppression of the 
Confederate RepubHc and of the nascent 
government of the Philippines. Execrat- 
ing the burning of farmhouses in the Veldt, 
he could ignore the track of smoking deso- 
lation that marked Sherman's march through 
Georgia or Sheridan's raid in Virginia. 
Criticism of British greed for gold kept 
him cheerfully superior to the contrast of 
the gift of fifteen millions and the patient 
labour spent by the English to repatriate 
the Boer and start him again in life, with 
the protest he and his kind made against 
282 



THE SECRET LIFE 

General Grant's willingness to leave to the 
Southern soldier his starved horse as a 
means of reaching his ruined home. 

Conscience, demanding of the Sentiment- 
alist the bread of uprightness, he prodigally 
offers it a stone upon which to break its 
gnawing teeth. 

The African brother has long been one 
of the most valued of the Sentimentalist's 
resources. Passionately generous demands 
for the negro's equahty have made it pos- 
sible for him to cordially and contentedly 
insult and oppress his white fellow country- 
men. 

It is in this relation that the Sentimental- 
ists find Booker Washington so greatly to 
their taste. Washington, innocent of their 
purposes, of course is an admirable and 
sensible man, who has established an excel- 
lent school for the young people of his race. 
A school far wiser and more merciful in 
conception than any attempt made by the 
negrophiles to benefit their proteges, and 
all honour is due this enlightened ex-slave 
for his own astonishing progress and his 
generous sharing of his fruitful labours 
with his own people. The Sentimentalist 
283 



THE SECRET LIFE 

professes to find in it ** something godlike," 
a "touch of the divine," as one of them 
recently characterized what is, reduced to 
simple facts, the establishing of an industrial 
school for negroes by a negro. 

December i. 

The man who has educated the negro, 
The the man who has had in him 

Real really a touch of the divine, would 

"^^" never appeal to the Sentimentalist. 

Booker Washington, very properly, of 
course, lives and lives well upon the results 
of his school. He has claimed from the 
rich, and justly has received, lavish aid for 
his enterprise. He dresses well, lives amply, 
travels in comfort, is entertained by Royalty 
and Chief Magistrates, and with his family, 
is put beyond even a chance of narrow 
means by his sympathizers' lavishness. But 
who heeds the man who has really educated 
the negro? What crowned head or Presi- 
dent entertains the small farmer in rough 
brogans and faded jeans, who sweats over 
his hoe in the cotton and tobacco fields, 
or in the steaming rice and sugar-cane 
swamps, and who has in forty years spent 
284 



THE SECRET LIFE 

more than a hundred millions upon the 
education of the negro ? This is the man, 
and the son of the man who turned heart- 
brokenly home on the begrudged horse 
to fields overgrown and laid waste — fields 
to which his conquerors, unlike the English, 
contributed no seeds or implements or 
stock — and from that land he has wrung 
by the hard labour of his hands that hundred 
millions which has been spent in educating 
his ex-slave. 

He has lived hardly, in dingy, decaying 
houses, he has eaten of the coarsest, he has 
known no beauty or grace, and but scant 
comfort, he has been clothed in the plainest, 
he has politically known little but injury 
and contempt from the larger and wealthier 
half of his country, and worst of all he has 
seen his sons grow to manhood but partially 
and inadequately equipped with learning, 
because so large a portion of their birth- 
right must be shared in the teaching of the 
negro in whose name he had been plun- 
dered and slaughtered. 

The touching point of the story is that 
it has all been done without any conscious- 
ness of special merit. The duty was to be 
285 



THE SECRET LIFE 

done, and was done without trumpets or 
drums. Such silent, patient, unreflecting, 
unadvertised goodness would, of course, 
never appeal to the Sentimentalist. If he 
could be brought to see it 'twould merely 
disturb his self-satisfaction. 

It is only to the fantastic mind of a here- 
tic that its meaning appeals, only the heart 
of a cynic is touched by the instinctive 
heroism of the white man of the South. 

December 15. 

I am just home from a meeting of one 
of those literary clubs we American women 
"Oh, so much affect, in the absence of 

Eloquent, ^^^ masculine society, and we 
Mighty have been talking about Stevenson 
Death." ^s the poct most typical of the 
mind of the nineteenth century. It was 
all that delicious welter in the sentimen- 
talities of the domestic affections which 
any assemblage of females finds it impos- 
sible to avoid; and we read aloud to one 
another — with the vox humana lilt turned 
on — all those decidedly dull little lyrics 
in the "Child's Garden of Verses," and 
came away with just that moist brightness 
286 



THE SECRET LIFE 

of the eye, that wistful, tender "mother- 
smile," which was correct of the occasion. 

I say we^ but of course my wicked old 
eyes were as hard as horn, yet, thank heaven! 
my unruly tongue uttered not a note out of 
tune with the Domestic Symphony. Who 
will say that social slappings have taught 
me nothing ? Even I can be daunted by 
the unhappy silences that so often greet 
my blurted comments, and by the soft rustles 
of relief that respond to the rising of some 
gentle lady, who will obliquely but cer- 
tainly crush me with her pious phrases, 
that throb with the warm sweetness of the 
dear old human platitudes, and which are re- 
warded by applause which poUtely accentu- 
ates my disgrace. . . . Oh, amiable and 
philosophic white page! To you I can be 
a tiresome and protesting bore, sure of no 
strictures in your silence. Here I can un- 
pack my heart with words, unrebuked. 
Here I can whisper safely my suspicion that 
dear R. L. S. himself would have been con- 
sumed with cheerful amusement at our 
gentle comments upon his doughty spirit. 

The world says all sorts of absurd things 
about Stevenson. Some one the other day 
287 



THE SECRET LIFE 

called him "an unquenchable Calvinist"! — 
He who was all pagan and Roman. The 
Calvinist was the European most subdued 
by the Semitic beliefs, most merged into 
Oriental preconceptions of life. 

Certainly the European mind in its 
natural state faced its consciousness of 
existence with no preconceived theories. 
Its attitude was that of the child. It found 
itself face to face with a great, astonishing, 
beautiful universe, and asked itself what 
it must think of this universe ; how use its 
opportunities therein. The child stumbled 
into a thousand infantile delusions and mis- 
conceptions, but its eyes were unclouded, 
its intelligence good. He soon discovered 
that though many things were pleasant, 
these pleasant things, when used indis- 
creetly, had a hidden potentiaHty of pain. 
With this second discovery, however — 
being a wise child — came no foolish horror 
of all pleasant things; only an illumination 
as to the value of moderation. 

The phenomena of age, death, and decay 

left the child serious, but not depressed. 

These were not pleasant things, admittedly; 

but since they appeared inevitable, there 

288 



THE SECRET LIFE 

was plainly no use in attempting to escape 
them. The proper attitude toward such 
solemnities was a manly courage, a brave 
submission. In any case, the child con- 
cluded, with all the sufferings, contradic- 
tions, and puzzling inequalities of existence, 
at least for all those called upon to face these 
griefs, there remained some small space of 
clear, warm, beautiful life; sunshine, food, 
love, and — more and better than all — 
that tingling, exquisite quiver of the senses 
which he agreed to call by the divine name 
of Beauty. He saw that the pains, the 
joys, the growth and blight, decay and ex- 
tinction, were not of his lot only, but were 
shared by all his surroundings. Feeling 
himself alone neither in his opportunities 
nor his inevitable doom, he accepted his 
fate with the courageous calm, the uncom- 
plaining resignation, of his fellow-creatures. 
He lived and he died as unresentfully as 
did the summer leaves, whose season of 
existence was so much briefer than his 
own. 

His kinship with encompassing nature 
was so close that it touched him on every 
side. He became as aware of the souls of 
289 



THE SECRET LIFE 

all things about him as he was aware of his 
own. He felt a similar spirit of life in the 
trees of the forest, the stones of the moun- 
tains, in the sea winds, in the brooks, the 
rivers and their reeds. He guessed at their 
names, their loves, their histories, as one 
guesses at those of unknown passers-by 
travelling the same road. Out of these 
speculations arose all his arts, his poetry, 
his legends, and his myths. When the 
moon stooped toward the western hills she 
leaned in a passion like his own toward 
youth and desire. The blood of a slain 
love became visible to him as it returned 
to the upper air in dim, faint-scented blos- 
soms, bearing written on their purple leaves 
the plaintive ai! ail of her left mourning 
for dead beauty. The very breeze that 
sighed through the rushes was the wistful 
voice of one unwisely reluctant of earthly 
joy and pain. 

It is almost impossible for us — so long 
saturated with Semitic thought — to re- 
create for ourselves the mind of the Greeks 
and Romans fed upon the strength and 
beauty of a noble pantheism — whose in- 
terpretation of life knit their souls to the 
290 



THE SECRET LIFE 

wholesome earth, and filled them with zest 
to live and patience to die — whose gods 
embodied their own lovely ideals of youth 
immortal, beauty unfading, serene wisdom, 
the soil's natural wealth, the vine's purple 
joy. Their attention was fixed upon the 
present life — their problem how to live it 
bravely, wisely, richly. All beyond this 
were uncertain shadows, about which it 
was impossible to know, and useless to 
speculate. 

Upon the Etruscan tombs, of all mortuary 
monuments the most lovely, is to be found 
a revelation clearer than words of the Euro- 
pean attitude toward death — those re- 
cumbent figures, all grace and peace, carved 
by the hands of forgotten genius with so 
inexplicable a skill that the immemorial 
stone grows deliquescent before one's eyes 
as if melting and sinking into the mother 
earth. In them is no sense of struggle or re- 
bellion. They consent to extinction as 
gently as autumn's last day fades into the 
silence and darkness of winter. Their sea- 
son has been fulfilled. They have Hved and 
loved, and they are proudly willing to sink 
into the elements from which they rose. 
291 



THE SECRET LIFE 

It was not until the Asiatic conquests of 
Alexander brought the mind of Europe into 
contact with the religions of the East, that 
this sane attitude was darkened by a con- 
ception as radically opposite as the an- 
tipodes. Nor did the Roman civilization 
suffer a shadow upon its manhood until it 
in turn brought home with its eastern 
captives that fierce egotism that feared 
extinction as an irremediable horror. This 
mind of the other hemisphere could never 
reconcile itself to the inevitable blotting 
out of its own individuality. Impossible 
as it was to deny the incontrovertible fact 
of death, it conceived, as an escape from 
the greatest of evils, the idea of the con- 
tinuance of its identity either in an endless 
round of reincarnations, or as an impal- 
pable essence triumphant in heaven or de- 
feated in hell. The shadow of their own 
terror cast upon their imagination the 
figures of monstrous deities — thousand- 
armed, myriad-eyed, maleficent, and unakin 
to themselves. Gods not to be propitiated 
by song and dance, or the offering of fruit 
and flowers, but loving to snuff at altars 
drenched in blood; placated for the sins 
292 



THE SECRET LIFE 

of the guilty only by the anguish of the 
innocent, and so meticulous in their tyranny 
as to require not only the abandonment of 
all natural appetites, but pursuing even 
unwitting lapses from submission with eter- 
nal and malignant penalties. 

Oriental egotism flung itself with equal 
persistence against the limitations of time, 
space, and character. In the East arose 
the systems of magic which sought philoso- 
pher's stones, elixirs of youth; which en- 
deavoured to overcome all obstacles through 
pure intensity of will, and undertook to 
constrain even the prodigious gods it had 
itself created by sheer force of its own 
asceticism and determination. 

Rome had been completely honeycombed 
and corrupted by Eastern mysticism before 
the final fatal clash of faiths occurred under 
Constantine, and the Semitic conception 
of the immortal importance of the human 
individual overthrew European nature-wor- 
ship. So potent was this idea that for more 
than a thousand years Europe lent itself to 
scorn and repression of nature, and at- 
tempted to deal with life as only a pathway 
to death and the infinitely more important 
293 



THE SECRET LIFE 

future beyond. The miserable confusion 
of the Dark Ages was the result of this 
struggle of the materialistic spirit of the 
European race in the bonds of a mysticism 
foreign to its genius. 

The Renaissance was rightly named a 
new birth. Out of the womb of this long 
night arose once again the mind of the 
West in its natural shape. Slowly beauty, 
knowledge, health, regained their old em- 
pire. Life grew in importance, and the 
futile, millennial-long struggle against death 
began to seem what it truly was — a mere 
terrified dream of the darkness. 

All this appears a long way around to 
Stevenson, but it is by this avenue I travelled 
— amid all those soft declamations — to 
find him the typical poet of the nineteenth 
century. Stevenson is pure Roman, not 
a touch of the Semitic is upon him. Every 
line of his prose and verse attests it. Some- 
one said the other day that Hardy was not 
so much a pagan as a "revolted Christian," 
and brought as a charge against him that he 
did not resent the hard fates of the char- 
acters in his books. The second charge, 
of course, contradicts the first. It was the 
294 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Eastern rebellion against Fate — against 
things as they are — that nourished its 
mysticism. But however one may decide 
as to Hardy there is no uncertainty as to 
Stevenson. His relish for Hfe — life with 
all its pains and hmitations — was keen 
to ecstasy. He leaves no dubiety on that 
head. Here was no wish for a city of gold 
and pearl, fenced from care, in which to 
take the refuge of ease in an impossible 
Elysium. His ** House Beautiful" was 

"A naked house, a naked moor" 

and 

— "the incomparable pomp of Eve" 

was all he asked to make desirable "this 
earth, our hermitage." 

That this life leads to nothing more does 
not daunt him. 

"On every hand the roads begin, 
And people walk with zeal therein, 
But wheresoe'er the highways tend 
Be sure there's nothing at the end." 

To which he adds cheerfully : 

"Hail and farewell! I must arise. 
Leave here the fatted cattle. 
And paint on foreign lands and skies 
My Odyssey of battle. 



THE SECRET LIFE 

"The untented Cosmos my abode, 
I pass, a, wilful stranger; 
My mistress still the open road 
And the bright eyes of danger. 

"Come ill or well, the Cross, the Crown, 
The rainbow, or the thunder, 
I fling my soul and body down 
For God to plow them under." 

He will allow no mistake as to the pur- 
pose of his existence. He cares not what 
may lie beyond the portals of an undreaded 
death, but this bright, present existence is 
for manful struggle; a struggle not main- 
tained in hope of future, or terror of punish- 
ment, but because he loves not only 

"Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, 
A bin of wine, a spice of wit, 
A house with lawns enclosing it, 
A living river by the door, 
A nightingale in the sycamore" — 

but loves also to 

" Climb 



Where no undubbed civilian dares. 
In my war-harness, the loud stairs 
Of honour " 

Nothing so moves his scorn as the lazy 

maggot who shuts himself into the snug 

nut of his religion and concern himself only 

to save his own poor, unimportant little 

296 



THE SECRET LIFE 

soul. Hear the call of his "Lady of the 
Snows" to the pallid monks uttering prayers 
and memento mori. And Stevenson speaks 
as does he who knows. It is easy enough 
for those sitting cozily at home to talk loudly 
of war and danger, but this was a man who 
literally fought with death daily. An ex- 
tract from one of his private letters, written 
shortly before the end, says: 

"For fourteen years, I have not had a 
day's real health; I have wakened sick and 
gone to bed weary; and I have done my 
work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, 
and written out of it, written in hemor- 
rhages, written in sickness, written torn by 
coughing, written when my head swam for 
weakness; and for so long, it seems to me 
I have won my wager and recovered my 
glove. I am better now, have been, rightly 
speaking, since first I came to the Pacific; 
and still, few are the days when I am not 
in some physical distress. And the battle 
goes on — ill or well, is a trifle ; so as it 
goes. I was made for a contest, and the 
Powers have so willed that my battlefield 
should be this dingy, inglorious one of the 
bed and the physic bottle. At least I have 
297 



THE SECRET LIFE 

not failed, but I would have preferred a 
place of trumpetings and the open air over 
my head." 

And after a desperate illness, when he rose 
gasping from the waters of extinction, his 
first cry on feeling the earth beneath his 
feet once more were those brave verses 
"Not Yet my Soul." 

He was not upborne by any of that so 
amazing sense of superiority to the rest of 
the universe which has aided vain humanity 
to minimize its defeats. He knew how 
small was his place in what Carlyle calls 
"the centre of immensities, the conflux of 
eternities." Hear him paint what he calls 
his "Portrait," and he reiterated that his 
noblest impulses were akin to "a similar 
point of honour which sways the elephant, 
the oyster, and the louse, of whom we 
know so little." 

Finally, in the famous Christmas Sermon 
he sums up in prose the thoughts that 
breathe through all the varying cadence of 
his verse — 

"Whether we regard life as a lane lead- 
ing to a dead wall — a mere bag's end, as 
the French say — or whether we think of it 
298 



THE SECRET LIFE 

as a vestibule or gymnasium where we wait 
our turn and prepare our faculties for some 
nobler destiny . . . whether we look justly 
for years of health and vigour, or are about 
to mount into a bath chair as a step towards 
the hearse, — in each and all of these situa- 
tions there is but one conclusion possible; 
that a man should stop his ears to para- 
lyzing terror, and run the race that is set 
before him with a single mind." 

In that Sermon is all the philosophy of 
Greece, the stern courage of Rome. 

December 23. 

Strange things rise up to us out of the 
deeps. Because I am a heathen, and 
Apollo is my god rather than any uphjugtia, 
other, I have never been quite able be Thou 
to comprehend the powerful ap- ^^^^ 

. of Me." 

peal the Hebrew Messiah makes 
to the hearts of so many. The solution is 
to be found in this *'De Profundis'* — 
Oscar Wilde's posthumous volume. It is 
a beautiful book: likely to become a classic 
of our language by reason of its beautiful, 
limpid English, its amazing exposition of 
the course of reasoning by which an outcast 
299 



THE SECRET LIFE 

of humanity reaches peace and reconcilia- 
tion with his own soul. 

The man's crime, I think, was the result 
of his reluctance to relinquish youth, with 
its passions and stimulations of the senses. 
We all find its relinquishment a tragedy. 
Some of us refuse to accept the slow, cold 
enveloping of that cruel serpent of Time, 
which squeezes out of us our beauty, our 
vigour, our warmth, and leaves us pallid and 
eviscerated before devouring us entirely. 
Wilde, whose whole existence was the pur- 
suit of passion and beauty, violently resent- 
ing the fact that with the lapse of years he 
was no longer able to wake the old thrill of 
existence by any of the old methods — find- 
ing that poetry, art, and the beauty of 
women all left him more and more jaded 
and cold, he grasped at vice as a means of 
heat, and brought himself within the iron 
clutch of the law. One can guess, even with- 
out the aid of his own confessions, at the 
hysterical rage of this sybaritic dandy caught 
in the grim trap of the reprobation of So- 
ciety. Not only the physical discomforts and 
restraints bore heavily, but more intoler- 
able was the contempt and disgust of the 
300 



THE SECRET LIFE 

average man — the Philistine — to whom he 
had always held himself airily and scorn- 
fully superior. The old primal laws of the 
struggle for life lie too deep for even the 
boldest of us to lightly face universal con- 
demnation. The worst of rebels and cynics 
is so dependent upon the countenance of 
his fellows that when good-will is with- 
drawn a sort of madness of despair falls 
upon him, and this vain, sensitive poet 
makes it plain how the passionate protest 
of the ordinary criminal was in his case 
intensified to ecstasy. One sees the poor 
creature, like a rat in a cage, darting hither 
and thither, and shivering with sick and 
furious helplessness at the rigidity of the 
barriers by which the world had shut him 
away from any further part in the body 
corporate. 

In the last exhaustion of his grief a light 
dawned for him. There was one who had 
protested against these laws of reprobation 
which Society had codified — one who had 
mercy for the sinner; who had insisted 
that the suffering and sorrow experienced 
by those not conforming themselves to the 
pattern Society demanded regenerated the 
301 



THE SECRET LIFE 

victims of sorrow, and they became of more 
worth than those who condemned them. 
Here was a means of regaining his own peace 
with himself. Here was a way out of his 
imprisonment in the scorn of his fellows. 

Mary Magdalen, because of her sumptu- 
ous repentance, was of more value than the 
busy and virtuous Martha. The Prodigal 
Son was more welcome than the patient 
home-keeper. The lost sheep was the really 
important member of the flock. The re- 
pentant thief was the heir of Paradise. The 
sinning woman was bid go in peace. All 
the offenders against the laws of Society 
were welcomed: the dull walkers in the 
beaten path were contumeliously branded 
as PhiUstines and Pharisees. At once, by 
this point of view, the prisoner was freed 
from his cell. It was possible to stand up- 
right once more and return frown for frown 
with his judges. All these were redeemed 
by their "beautiful moment" — ? Well, 
let him too have his beautiful moment and 
he was really of more worth than those who 
had condemned him. 

Here is the secret of the hold the Hebrew 
thinker has had upon humanity. 
302 



THE SECRET LIFE 

When our race slowly began to stand up 
on their hind legs and to live a life in com- 
mon, they found — as the ants and bees 
had done before them — that the common 
life was only to be made feasible by adopting 
some general law of behaviour which would 
enable individuals to assimilate; and so 
morals and conscience had their generation. 
A man might never leave his home if the 
tribe would not accept it as an evil to steal; 
might never sleep in peace if murder were 
not a crime; would not feed his children 
were there not a rule against adultery which 
ensured him against assuming duties to 
cuckoos. How bitter, slow, and toil- 
some was that upward struggle to subdue 
for the good of the mass the lusts of the 
individual all history relates. Always a 
remnant have protested against these hard 
exactions of the general good at their ex- 
pense. Always the tribe has, for its own 
safety, slain, imprisoned, cast out the rebels. 
The war is not over yet; will, possibly, 
never end. Always those who prefer their 
own ends will strive to find justification for 
their wilfulness; will seek some ground for 
answering scorn with scorn — and their vo- 

303 



THE SECRET LIFE 

ciferousness, their lofty, sentimental phrases 
confuse the minds of the slow-witted. 

Alas ! dear Philistine — what contumely 
you suffer at the hands of the revolted! 
You have grown apologetic for your virtues, 
which the idealists cast in your teeth as a 
reproach. You are so foolish you cannot 
eat of the fruit of desire and at once make 
it as though it had never been by one 
"beautiful moment" of emotion. You are 
so stupid you cannot content the neighbour 
who owned the fruit by accusing him of 
being hard because your repentance does 
not satisfy him for his loss. You are 
'* stodgy"; you are "narrow." You are 
bitter and untender because you worship 
the God of Things as They Are, instead of 
accepting a theism of Things as They 
Might Be. Of course you really rule the 
world, and when your critics become too 
aggressive your logic of stone walls and 
iron bars makes a trenchant reply, but you 
are very inarticulate. No one gives you 
credit for your patient, dull self-restraint. 
You almost apologize to the scoffers for 
your persistent moral drudgery. You talk 
very little about the temptations you have 
304 



THE SECRET LIFE 

resisted — so much less dramatic than sins 
against your fellows histrionically washed 
away by repentant tears. Your painful 
drudging up the path of obvious duty 
dazzles and touches no one. — But I, at 
least, love and respect you — you poor old 
self-denying Pharisee! 

December 24. 

Oh, King! — great King „ ^^ g.. 

Afar in that pleasant place — t • i? m 

/oi • • A 1 Live Forever!" 

(bleeping in Avalon, 

Island of Queens — ) 

What are thy dreams ? 

Where no sound cometh at all 

Save the lapping of waves. 

Of the lake's vpaves lapping the shore; 

And the moving of winds 

Stirring a rustle and ripple of leaves — 

An infinite rustle and ripple of leaves — 

And lifting a little, a little thy wide-strewn hair 

Fadeless and gold — 

What are thy dreams ? 

There where no bird sings, 

Nor is any bruit by thy head 

Save only the singing of Queens — 

Seven and sad — 

Singing of swords and of war, 

Singing of Carleon — 

Singing a magical lay, 

Sweeter than lutes, 

A song made of magic by Merlin 

Dead in the wood. . . . 

What are thy dreams, oh King! — 

Arthur — thy dreams ? 



THE SECRET LIFE 

Tristram is dead, and Gawain. 

Galahad gone, and Sir Bors. 

Merlin is dead in the wood. 

The base peasant tramples the mire 

That once was the heart and the lips 

Of Mordred the base and the liar. 

The wind of the Breton coast, 

Stormy and sad, 

Has blown for a thousand years 

The dust of that Knight — 

Launcelot's dust — 

Dust of his bones — 

To and fro in the roads — 

And the dust of his sword 

Blows in the eyes of brave men passing that way 

And stings them to tears. 

Oh, dread King, what are thy dreams ? 

Guinevere is but a name — 

Frail, and lovely, and sad. 

All whom thou lovedst are gone. 

Beauty availed them not; 

Courage, nor pride, nor desire. 

The sound of their singing is dumb; 

The sword is broken in twain; 

Magic to folly is turned; 

Even love might not avail. 

Only the King liveth still — 

Only the King 

Liveth and dreams. 

Only the heart above self — 

Only the heart steadfast and wise 

Liveth forever in Avalon, 

Hearing a song 

Always of swords and of war, 

But dreaming of Peace, 

Dreaming of Honour, oh King! 

Dreaming great dreams. 

306 



THE SECRET LIFE 

January i. 

I remember that long ago when I used 
to be made to memorize Campbell's senti- 
mental lines on The Exile, beginning, 

" There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin " — 

they only called forth my unsympathetic 
infantile jeers; but last spring I went home. 
Suddenly, as we passed along the xhe 
tawny marshes lying like great Little 
dun lions by the edge of the misty °°°^* 

gulf, I realized that for twenty discon- 
tented years I too had been suffering 
the pangs of the Exile. Memories and 
emotions, so long disused as to be almost 
forgotten, boiled up with the impetuosity 
of geysers. Possessions of my secret life 
that I think I was never really conscious 
of at all came to Hfe. I haven't the least 
idea, for example, why the buoyant feathery 
boughs of the first Southern cedar I saw 
made me strongly wish to weep lovely, 
sentimental tears, but I knew at once why 
I had invariably felt bored with the con- 
ventional admiration of mountains. Why, 
indeed, should scenery only be important 
when perpendicular ? To my mind, to have 
307 



THE SECRET LIFE 

the landscape getting up on its hind legs and 
hiding the view is simply tiresome. Here 
one could see everything — could open 
one's lungs and breathe what the Creoles 
used to call la grande air, and let one's heart 
go out to the land. 

You blessed mother country! Those 
people where I have lived so long seem not 
to care particularly for their birthplaces. 
Their patriotism is satisfied by an immense 
political abstraction and a striped flag. I 
have always suspected that if one took off 
the heads of such folk and looked down 
inside one would find inside only wheels 
and coiled springs, instead of flesh and 
blood. David Yandell used to say, "Fm 
for the Yandells against the whole world, 
but if it's between the Yandells and Dave, 
then I'm for Dave!" One might be for 
that political abstraction against the world, 
but between that abstraction and Louisiana, 
then I'm for Louisiana. 

I began to suspect too that some of my 
heresies and revolts had really been caused 
by the bitterness of exile, though from the 
very beginning I have seen the King without 
his mantle. When my elders handed out 
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THE SECRET LIFE 

to me the accepted platitudes in answer to 
my early attempts to realize the world in 
which I moved, I stared at them "in a wild 
surmise," the aforesaid conventionalities 
appearing to me to be so at variance with 
the facts as I saw them. They appeared 
to me — these elders — to be imagining a 
King's cloak to cover the world as it really 
was; to be neglecting and minimizing the 
things really worth while; to be inventing 
ideals and standards not in themselves 
noble. 

I struggled long against the mask and 
domino which muffled words and impeded 
action, but time and the years have made 
me more patient. I have grown to see that 
they may have their uses. The average 
man shrinks aghast from the naked truth, 
even when it is beautiful. There is a sort 
of universal prudery that shrinks from the 
nude in life as well as in art. Perhaps these 
universal draperies cover as much that is 
repulsive as it does of the beautiful. 

Verestchagin, the Russian painter who 

was blown up on the Petropalovsk, had 

three pictures with him when he was in this 

country that conveyed to me a much needed 

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THE SECRET LIFE 

lesson. He called them "Christ in the 
Wilderness," **The Sermon on the Mount,'* 
and "The Cursing of Jerusalem." — A 
haggard boy fleeing to the desert for medi- 
tation upon the tragedies of existence, for 
which he is sure there must be some panacea 
if one could only think it out; the tri- 
umphant youth announcing to humanity 
the solution of all its difficulties; and the 
disappointed man crying reproachfully to 
the heedless multitude preferring its own old 
way — "how often would I have gathered 
thy children together as a hen doth gather 
her brood under her wings, and ye would 
not!" 

As time cools our cocksureness, more 
and more is one willing to let the world go 
its own gait and retire into one's secret 
life ; and there comes at last one day a reve- 
lation of the meaning of it all, and this 
revelation brings peace and poise. The 
four walls of character and environment 
are an unescapable prison. Heroic effort 
will not open a door or break through its 
blank solidity. One may look out upon the 
world from one's little room, but there one 
must live one's appointed time. In youth 
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THE SECRET LIFE 

one does not understand or accept this: 
then anything seems possible of expansion 
or change, but veillesse savaii. 

Once this is accepted — not by word 
alone, but mentally grasped and realized — 
the disordered, confusing bits of existence 
fall at once into an ordered pattern. Life 
must be lived in the Little Room. Others 
may not enter; one's self may not escape. 
Action falls within its space and can, there- 
fore, be calmly ordered and planned. One 
will not undertake aught that is impossible 
within its compass, and struggle, discon- 
tent, and confusion are therefore at an end. 
And within this inviolate enclosure one is 
safe and private. To those regarding it 
from without its appearance is much like 
that of all the other cubicles, but inside, if 
one chooses, it may be richly hung, 
sumptuously adorned, with the treasures of 
one*s secret life. Odd, outworn weapons 
of opinion may give a martial touch to the 
walls here and there; treasures brought up 
from the deep may speak of the wild winds 
of young fancy, and taste yet of the salt of 
long dried tears. Soft imaginings may invite 
the weary head, fine embroideries wrought 
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from the many-coloured threads of life 
may lie beneath the foot. The prison is, 
should one choose it, a palace. 

Long ago, of a summer morning, thread- 
ing with soundless paddle and slow-sliding 
canoe one of the quiet streams that wound 
like a blue vein across the sunburned breast 
of those marshes, I found in the deep 
grasses, that everywhere grew breast high, 
an illimitable garden of flowers. Looked at 
from above there was but the smooth, deep 
fleece of verdure — but thus intimate, close 
to the warm skin of these vast salt prairies, 
thousands of beautiful freakish blossoms 
revealed themselves — many-tinted, heavy 
as wax, fragile as cobwebs, perfumed, 
fantastic, multitudinous. . . . 

I stared a little, pondering, and then 
passed on carelessly about my childish 
business, unrealizing that I had found 
a picture and a parable to hang, after 
many years, upon the walls of my Little 
Room. 

January 2. 

If it might be, Life's harvest being past, ... ,. 

And past the perfect fruitage of the soul, 

I yet might gather up some small sweet dole 

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THE SECRET LIFE 

From out Time's fingers in the wide fields cast — 

If it might be that though from out the vast 

Blue spaces all the tides of light did roll. 

There yet might linger some pale aureole 

To faintly flush my western sky at last — 

I would forbear youth's lordly large demands, 

Nor swallow tears at sight of loaded wains 

Of others who all full and rich did go; 

Content that I, no more with empty hands. 

Might bear across the level darkening lands 

My sweet few sheaves home through the afterglow. 



313 



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